Regardless of one’s perspective of the Cubase developer team, or the GUI in Cubase, one has to admire the persistent inability to provide a solid window interface that works like say Microsoft Office, for example. Microsoft and the office teams (over the years) have spent countless dollars on research for the user interface. One would think that such a gold mine would have been used to end the debate.
On the other side, Cubase is not Office, and the multi-window concept seems to have been minimized, if I may offer a pun, albeit somewhat pungent, oops… For example, on a Windows 8.1 machine used only for Cubase projects, I cannot find a built-in application (i.e. desktop) that use the concept of a multi document interface (now, I didn’t look hard, but I did poke around a little bit). The newer Windows Store apps do not use this concept either, but rather a multi “page” interface, more closely related to how browsers typically work.
Considering that Steinberg is becoming even more cross platform driven, it is not unheard of to get a hybrid or home brewed approach (well, Germany has many good brewing companies and it’s the home of Steinberg). This probably needs a large portion of the “blame” of why it does not feel like a solid and typical Windows function. It would appear that the “main” window loose the min/max buttons when another window is open, e.g. VST Connections. Maybe a trade off to enable other functionality. Whatever the case, I like the current way better than how it used to be.
Hurrah for progress. Bravo, team Steinberg. I like it so far!
If I could vote on future directions, I would say that the interface should fit the application. It would be a bit overkill to provide an Office-like experience for the Windows Sound Recorder. Not that it wouldn’t work, just a bit of a stretch, IMO. So please make the Cubase interface do the tedious work, and I’ll be happy. Whether the main window can be minimized or not, doesn’t bother me one bit. On the other hand, if I have to click something every time I open it, or when something appears, well… honestly? That would piss me off (and Cubase has a number of these thingies, unfortunately). This may be how some feel about the minimize button, and I can appreciate that, really I can, but not me and again, I’d rather have Cubase do the tedious bits while I compose. That is why I use Cubase.