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JazzMutant has some pretty nifty stuff.

It works just great as a DAW controller. You project all kinds of knobs and sliders on the screen and use TouchOSC or something to control your gear or draw your automation with. Surely a lot more useful than a dedicated controller which does nothing else at all besides controlling, and which has a fixed surface. Ever heard of the Jazzmutant Lemur? Like that - only cheaper.

If that's all you see this thing as good for, you need to open your mind a bit. The fact is people are already using iphones for a lot more than this, and even if this is just a large iphone, that means a hell of a lot more than a "glorified ereader." I probably will wait for the price to come down but I'm interested in getting one of these for the various music production applications already present on the iphone. As a touchscreen MIDI controller even the most expensive iPad is about a third the price of the Jazzmutant Lemur, and the latter only performs that one function. I'm not saying you couldn't replicate this sort of functionality with a Windows tablet computer, but nobody has yet, and certainly not as elegantly.

"Modern Technology" requires a specialized OS and specialized software to "almost" get it right, "sometimes."

It's called MacOS X with Core Audio or Windows with ASIO. Both proven to provide low latency and making ordinary computer hardware do marvelous things with Audio.

Going by your rant that its nigh impossible to do midi + audio + etc in realtime then by that same definition the following set of artists taken as example would not be able to make music if it wasn't for digital sequencing.

Trent likes Apple's Logic Software.
Daft Punk and Bjork on many occasions use an ethernet driven midi controller. Latency Much? See the JazzMutant Lemur
Aphex Twin, He's hooked up more then his fair share of weird shit and made it work.
Daedalus / Prefuse 73 / Eluvium / Venetian Snares / etc.

Without modern tech we would not have the sonic landscape we have today. Nor would many interesting live performances be possible.

If your Sequencing / DAW workstation is not capable of keeping everything in sync and under a preferred 11ms latency it simply means your rig is not up to the task of what your demanding from it.

So by default I call BS on your statement, as well as wanting a 0ms latency being rhetorical for even being mentioned.

ALL my keys would be Tatu jpgs. Fuck the Optimus anyhow - I have a Lemur!

There already is a DJ console based on this technology.

The Multi-touch screen is very cool! It looks like it has the potential to be a pocket version of this research project. There's also the lemur multi touch screen. I wonder if apple bought out these patents or if the screen is not included in the list of "200 patents" for the iPhone?

It's no Newton... but what's coming next?

I'm not sure how much you'd want to add to it. Its got excellent form factor and at least in perfect-demo-land looks very easy to use.

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There's already a company that is selling a product with a multi-touch sensor that doesn't require a camera behind the screen to see your fingers (which is how this rear-projected screen works) right here. It's a 15 inch LCD interface for controlling MIDI and OSC applications.

I'd like to see an LCARS theme for this.

The only product on the market which does this right now is called the Lemur, and its price is out of range for many musicians. Apple's ability to target products at the mass-market bodes very well here.

It reminds me very much of Fingerworks technology with multi-touch technology with gestures of various sorts. More gestures here. On the surface, it looks like the exact same technology as the touchpads/keyboards but on the screen.

This company is now out of business (actually sold out VERY QUIETLY by Apple for the patents) and supposedly being used in the new iPod (I don't own one so I can't verify). It's really too bad, I always wanted their keyboard because it acts as a mouse too (on either side, plus has editable gestures plus a built in Emacs set plus a programming pad without moving your hand....)

Plus it has been suspected that Apple are using those patents now and applying for more patents for a Tablet that will have similiar capabilities.

Plus there's another company that has something for the music market that I find cool (but expensive).

FWIW, you can buy something like this right now. The Lemur is a touch screen that supports multiple touch-points at once, and communicates over Ethernet via OpenSoundControl. I have one on my desk at work, and it works well -- e.g. I can use 5 fingers to drag 5 different balls around the Lemur's touch-screen simultaneously, and see my actions mirrored instantaneously on the software on my PC.

There's already a device like this on the market called the lemur. It's not as big and grand, but you can buy it now and there's no need for surgery. http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php

It's like a bigger fancier version of Jazzmutant's Lemur device, used for controlling virtual synth plugins and the like. It even uses the same OSC protocol, I wonder if they're based on similar multi-touch tech...

A company called JazzMutant makes a multiple-point touchscreen with customisable controls, used to drive virtual synths and audio workstations. It's lovely, and I want one. I wonder if this counts as prior art? It's certainly closer than the people talking about PDAs I think...

Maybe Apple stole their ideas: http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php

Just to correct some people here, multi-touch pads already exist and work very well:
http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php

It's short-sighted to think of this solely as a gaming device. If it's hooked up to a computer, then it can be a user interface device for use with any piece of software. To me, a large touchscreen which can distinguish amongst multiple simultaneous touches is begging to be used for controlling software synthesizers. That's the market on which the very similar Lemur product focusses.