Yes, you have.
So... now you're saying you've collapsed things?I open and close panels as I need them.
This applies to most DAWs, and no... these aren't just three fingered key presses. I could give scores of examples, but I'm not going to waste my time responding to this kind of exaggeration in such detail..After all, they are just a keypress away, "I" for the inspector, "B" for the browser, "D" for the Docker, or "C" for the control bar. And I press "F" to Fit all tracks in view. No need to use three fingered shortcuts like in other DAWs. And speaking of the Control Bar, you can dock it at the bottom, too.
The reason why 2 and 3 fingered keyboard shortcuts exist, is because the 1 button shortcuts have been exhausted. Pretty common in any deeply featured software application. Cakewalk has a lot of those, as well, though it has need for less due to the fact that it's not nearly as deeply featured as something like Cubase or Digital Performer.
This applies to most DAWs, already. Even Studio One can be navigated fairly briskly with the keyboard, and it's the king of drag-and-drop DAWs.What I like most about CbB UI is precisely that you can navigate it extensively with keyboard shortcuts.
Most people proficient with software do. Mice are good for accurate selections and input, but they are not as efficient as keyboard navigation.I hate having to use the mouse too much.
New users bias to mouse usage because they aren't yet familiar with the keyboard shortcuts in the application. So, you have to put yourself in their shoes - if possible - to see how this actually feels to them.
Cakewalk doesn't need old heads (90% of its market, at the moment) to stay on the DAW to grow. It needs to bring in new users that actually continue using the software in perpetuity to grow. How those users percieve the UX is key to them settling down and staying - first impressions are kind of a big deal.
We've already touched on some of that. And I absolutely would not say that REAPER has a better UI/UX than Cakewalk, as it is one of the absolute worst when it comes to that. But I'd definitely put Ableton and Bitwig ahead of it. In any case, the people going to Ableton and Bitwig are likely going to go to it for reasons beyond "whicih one has the better UI." Those DAWs have a ton of tooling and a workflow geared towards market segments that Cakewalk is not competitive in - and never really targeted.I have Live, Bitwig and Reaper and I do not see how CbB´s UI is any worse than any of those.
Furthermore, you clearly prefer Cakewalk, so your response is expected. We are all biased to our preferences. The fact that you own Bitwig, Live and REAPER doesn't really validate your response any more than if you had used nothing except SONAR/Cakewalk for the past 20 years. People buy extra DAWs to use in a secondary/utility fashion all the time. Big deal.
No. No one expects that. That is just what people say when they want to shrug off apparent weaknesses that are presented in a comparative fashion; the easiest way for users to actually demonstrate things to others on a forum (who aren't looking over their shoulders at a computer).All of them need to be learned, and all of them have their WTF quirks. The problem I see with most criticism about it is that some people seem to expect every program to work the same and get frustrated when they try a new DAW and find that some things do need to be learned.
It's a lot easier to explain things in terms of what another solution does differently, but that does not mean people expect to open Cakewalk and it's like they never left Ableton Live. This crutch is an exaggeration, and a complete misunderstanding. It doesn't even make sense, logically.
The UI isn't even Cakewalk's biggest problems as it pertains to bringing in people in the production scene, or making inroads into studios.
Gift horse stuff.
