In the past two days, I installed three digital audio workstation applications on my Windows laptop (Ardour, LMMC, Reaper). In each case, I just downloaded the latest version, did the install, then started the app. For Ardour and Reaper, both of them wanted me to select an audio input device (well, I didn’t have one!). I just clicked on something to get to the main app. For Ardour, I had to quit and try again, since the thing I clicked did not meet the app’s expectations. Only LMMC was able to start without some dialog popping up. For all three apps, I was then faced with a screen filled with various subwindows and a menu bar. What to do now?
Now, I will admit that these types of programs are complex, and require the user to know a little something about what they want to do, or how to use them. But when you compare this with many smartphone apps, there are usually some choices you can make from just looking at the screen to get started. Sure, each of the programs has some “getting started” resource (Ardour, LMMC, Reaper), but it might be nice for the app to have some built-in starter setup or task accessible from a menu (or something!). Just my two cents…