Win8

For a long time now I've considered Windows 8 to be something of a joke. It's certainly unattractive (to *my* sensibilities, anyway) and almost everything I've read about it seems to indicate that it's going to be a disaster.

But -- a couple of days ago I came across this article:

Jordan Rudess plays MorphWiz on Windows 8 PC and Surface tablet

Here's the relevent video:



Jordan Rudess (aka "the bald guy with the funny beard") is the keyboard player for the band Dream Theatre and he's been involved in music app development for iOS from the beginning. I think it says something -- I'm not precisely sure what -- that he's chosen to port his apps to Win8 and expand into this new territory. And I'm pretty sure MS is happy to have him on-board: he was part of the "keynote" for MS's Build 2012 conference this week.

It's interesting to note that Rudess has conspicuously chosen to jump into Win8 while almost entirely ignoring the Android market.

When I saw the video above that shows him "playing" a 27" Lenovo A720, it made me think that Apple missed a bet in their recent announcement of the next-gen iMac by not including a touch-screen surface. Maybe they will -- but that would mean that for the first time in a long time, Apple is following Microsoft's lead. Speaking purely for myself, a 27" touchscreen / music controller is at the top of my Christmas list. I would really love dual 3-octave "Animoog-style" keyboards with large keys where in addition to simply pressing each key, it has pressure sensitivity *and* you can use the X and Y motion of your fingertip to control a couple of parameters.

My takeaway on this: despite of all the fun that's been poked at Win8, I need to take it more seriously because it's beginning to show some really interesting strengths. I'm not going to ditch all of my Mac stuff and switch to Windows 8 -- but I'm kinda sorry I sold all of my Microsoft stock.