right. I've only been part of a multitouch UI r&d program at my university for a year or so... obviously I have no idea about these things but my last post really wasn't nice. apologies for that.
I don't want to be misunderstood, so let me be clear before you read the rest: I'm only talking about the context of DJ apps here - not about multitouch UIs in general!
I love touch screens. this is why I'm such a hardcore critic of all those systems that have been popping up and getting lots of hype recently. there's a lot of potential in those control surfaces, but nobody's really harnessing it for DJ apps. this project was realised in 3 months only which is insanely impressive, but that's about it. multitouch controllers aren't exactly brand-new, so I naturally expected more.
do we really? since the dawn of traktor 3, DJing has practically become idiot-proof and the scene has been flooded with stuff so bad, it's not even funny. this might sound elitist, but I liked it better when getting in the game required more effort. it was a quality filter of sorts. you didn't decide to start spinning just because you had nothing better to do and thought that adding the "DJ" prefix to your name will magically boost your coolness - you did it because you were a true music addict and didn't care about anything else. at least that's where I'm coming from.
on the other hand, of course, I love the fact that talented people who couldn't have afforded to start DJing due to financial reasons now have a bunch of powerful and relatively cheap tools at their disposal. but these talented people are grains of sand in a desert of lameness - and the only quality filter left now is the ridiculously small amount of knowledge you have to absorb in order to be able to grasp the power of a digital DJ setup. it's no rocket science, thus IMO reinventing the concept of two decks plus a couple of faders and knobs is a waste of time - especially since the solution shown here actually has fewer possibilities than an actual mixer (example: try cutting the high and low band of the EQ on one deck simultaneously - can't do it even with two hands).
I don't see the purpose behind simplifying something that is already dead simple. why reinvent the wheel when you have the technology to build a hyperdrive? as you said, multitouch controllers will definitely be a popular type of UI in the near future, but if the developers are just gonna reproduce and refine existing stuff to the point where you can give it to a monkey and have it throw together a "perfect" DJ set, what's the point. the whole thing needs to be pushed further and introduce stuff you actually couldn't do before (along the lines of your take on the multi-fx control in traktor, that's exactly what I mean).
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