Gear maker M-Audio is rolling out the first dedicated hardware controller designed expressly for use with GarageBand. For those new to digital audio production, what these controllers do is essentially break out often-used functions within the software interface into hardware-based controls, so that a musician/producer can press physical buttons or manipulate real knobs and sliders instead of having to use the mouse to trigger every function. The M-Audio iControl provides hardware controls for the transport functions (play, pause, stop, fast-forward, reverse, record) as well as a jog wheel for rotary forward and reverse and a master volume fader to control overall volume. It also has dedicated controls for each of GarageBand’s eight available tracks: knobs that can be assigned to track parameters such as pan and volume, as well as to effects parameters such as EQ, and dedicated mute, solo and record-enable buttons. iControl is USB-powered, which means you won’t trip over yet another power cord attached to yet another wall wart, and it’s automatically recognized by GarageBand which means you won’t be spending 30 minutes out of every session troubleshooting the drivers for your control device. Shipping out in May, the iControl will set you back $179.95.