Is it because Steinberg has enough money in the bank account that it no longer needs to provide a try before you buy version ?
Or because Steinberg has become as arrogant as Apple selling their Logic and Mainstage where the buyers are so rich they will buy the Apple product.
Some companies wait a couple of months before releasing a trial because they know the first commercial version released to the public is going to have a ton of bugs not caught by their internal QA.
They don’t want to scare away potential customers with a hella buggy demo. (They wait for their paying customers to report those bugs first!).
Steinberg has followed this pattern before (making demos available a few months after release), so I expect there will be a demo sometime after the first major service pack is released for Cubase 8. I noticed they don’t have a Cubase 8 “elements” version out yet either. I wonder if they’ll do one of those too?
Steinberg is not going to release it until at least the next update, only makes sense. Not sure what makes you think Apple users are “rich”, I use both Mac and PC for a living, and that’s just a ridiculous statement.
They would have to the make the Demo Work Right and could not charge us Ginnie Pigs for something that doesn’t Work! 