I found the viewpoint outlined in the linked article rather myopic.
Yes, the clickwheel was a wonderful bit of industrial design, and I've gotten as much mileage out of navigating it blind without so much as removing it from my pocket as anyone. And the current generation Nano is just awful. Apple has rebooted the Nano line 3 out of the last 4 years, and they're going to have to do it again, because that thing sucks. (Incidentally, I'm still using my G2 Nano. Bits of it have chipped off, but it keeps on ticking.)
So, does the author believe the world-class designers at Apple and other top design firms are just going to stop refining their attempts at sophisticated human interaction design? That's absurd. Perhaps these most recent developments in technology will prove detrimental in some use cases, but the designs for those specific use cases will be improved upon as necessary. The existence of touchscreens is no more a detriment than the advancements in technology that allowed that misguided article to be published to an audience who may not be sufficiently informed to question its conclusions.
Furthermore, the notion that the touchscreen represents a blemish on Apple's reputation is outrageous. Did the author miss the dozens of articles about it being the most practical, affordable, and functional learning and communication tool for those on the unfortunate end of the Autism spectrum that human civilization has produced to date? (Oh, did I say "dozens"? Google wagers it knows of over 27 million instances of web pages discussing the matter:
https://www.google.com/search?q=ipad+iphone+autism). How can anyone argue that a device that
infants can discover how to use without instruction somehow amounts to a step backwards in usability?
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=iphone+baby
As it pertains to music performance specifically, I defy anyone to name a pre-iThing technology that allowed for synthesizer modulation control on the level of Konkreet Performer or Omni TR for Omnisphere. And we're
just getting started.
Multitaskers are a gift and a curse. Simplicity has its benefits, but those benefits don't always outweigh the costs. Are you disappointed that the existence of your computer and Ableton Live allow you to host umpteen virtual instruments whereas without those technologies you'd be forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars on hardware synthesizers to achieve the same variety of sound? A patch cable is pretty simple, and a eurorack module tends to have a fairly straightforward function, but is a modular synthesizer the only viable option?
Forge. wrote:In a live situation I really hate the idea of something doing more than one thing - it just creates confusion. You want a certain knob to always do the same thing as much as possible. Save for maybe things like 8 macros where you can use them with instant mapping - but even that can be a source of confusion because you need to remember what is what.
And then there are some people who use Pages (
http://code.google.com/p/monome-pages/) to cram as wide a variety of functionality into their monomes as they desire. The monome, by the way, has none of the qualities of affordance described by the author. Nothing about the interface informs the user about how it is to be used. Quite to the contrary, the user defines how the device functions as he or she sees fit. A bounty of monome apps exist, free to anyone who wants them, and if one doesn't exist that suits your needs, you can write a Max or Pure data patch that will do exactly whatever you like. Seems to be working pretty well for a great many electronic musicians. Different strokes.
Forge. wrote:Maybe in the context of music it could be useful for example replacing the clip matrix on an APC40 so that you can actually see the clips that you are triggering to save looking at the laptop - but even there I get the feeling they would feel too fragile to be be thumped in the heat of the moment in a sweaty gig.....
I don't know Richie Hawtin personally (although I may be one of the only people on this forum who bought DE9|Closer to the Edit), so I can't say for sure, but I suspect he would contest that assumption:
http://liine.net/en/news/detroit.html
At that point, Griid was just a clip launcher, exactly as you described, since then they've added a mixer functionality, midi clip/note editing, and morphing between states in a Live set with Kapture/Kapturepad (originally designed as "couture software" for Plastikman, later released to the public). Touchable offers much of the same functionality, as well as specifically designed controls for some of Live's built-in effects (like a really lovely touch editor for eq8).
Of course there are flaws. In the iPad thread, Tarekith recently quoted/paraphrased an expression that Live expert/trainer and all around awesome hacker Martin Delaney is apparently fond of using, that playing a synthesizer on an iPad often feels like playing a hardware synth stuck under a piece of glass. (For the record, just a few days ago Delaney also announced on Twitter how stoked he was to be downloading Garageband for his iPhone, a synthesizer stuck under an even smaller piece of glass.) In my experience, all knobs/encoders in all touchscreen apps are absolutely miserable to use. Faders work a little better, though I can't relate to the obsession many devs have with attempting to make them look
exactly like faders on a mixing board. (Skeumorphic design drives me nuts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph). But, eventually the interface design will adjust to suit the platform. I have sketches all over my room of potential designs and interaction methods that could potentially replace things like fakie encoders in touchscreen apps. Someday I'll be thrilled to share them with you guys and the rest of the internet.
But, bringing things back to the article in question, in the not too distant future, none of this matters. The touchscreen isn't the future, it's the present. And in my opinion, it'll be more of a pitstop than a lasting paradigm. Notable nerd—and one time frontman for not-so-notable (though they apparently once opened for Ween), North Florida nerd-rock outfit Bacon Ray—Merlin Mann quipped this week (once again, on Twitter):
"You'll write, record, arrange, and mix 8-track songs on a computer the size of a cassette…that's also your phone." —insane note to 1986 Me
Which he then followed up with:
In related news: only seven more payments to Al's Guitar Barn, and that TASCAM Portastudio is mine all mine!
These insightful jokes help illustrate two points. First: the future would seem, to any rational person, to be completely fucking insane, right up until it's the present. Second: it's hard to recognize how inadequate and laughably quaint the present will seem until it's the past.
So what does our completely fucking insane future look like? For starters, Apple and other firms won't be stopping at cassette-sized computers. In a decade, a computer just as powerful as the one you're reading this on will fit in an enclosure about the size of a Chiclet. Don't believe me? I've noted it elsewhere already, but the dual-core A5 processor in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S has equivalent computing power to that of the Cray 2 supercomputer, which remained on the list of the worlds most powerful computers until 1994. It was also about the size of a hot tub, and that was appropriate, because it ran so hot that the whole thing had to be submerged in a new (at the time) inert cooling liquid from 3M for it to operate. I may or may not have broached the topic here, but I strongly believe we're no more than a decade from the contact lens display, or some other technology of comparable utility (retinal projection, whatever).
Just as with the iDevices, though, the hard part isn't squeezing more horsepower into a smaller box; so long as Intel stays in business we can count on that train to keep on moving (and if they go out of business, it'll be because someone else steps in with a far superior technology, that will fling us further into the future even faster). Nor is display technology the hard part; the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S offer pixel density so great that to the human eye text on their screens—which are a fraction of a centimeter thick—is nearly indistinguishable from text printed on a piece of paper. How long ago was every screen in your life a cathode ray tube?
The hard part is the input device. How do you interact with it? I'm no expert on human interaction design (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%8 ... nteraction) though I hope my work on touchscreen toys will allow me to develop useful insights. Here's one person's rather distopian-future illustration of what it may look like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSfKlCmYcLc …and a slightly less horrifying version from the same designer which is extra cool if you happen to have some 3d glasses lying around:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TL80ScTLlM
(video credit:
http://keiichimatsuda.com)
