I too wish you all Merry Christmas. I hope we will all have a great year, full of music, new technology and especially lots of fun and happinesss :-)
As for the touchscreen question, I'm not that a big fan either but you know some of the more complex user interfaces a pointing (mouse, touchscreen, trackball etc) device is almost mandatory.
That said this does not mean that the Mediastation requires its use almost all the time.
We will try to implement dual interfaces (both via button panels/ sliders/ dial wheel and touch screen) everywhere where it makes sense.
After all the 176 buttons are here to get utilized and every button was placed there to ease the usage of the keyboard avoiding the user to navigate through complex trees of on-screen menus.
cheers,
Benno
http://www.linuxsampler.org