FWIW, Dorico seems to run well on Big Sur so far. It may be my imagination, or ‘other factors’ (running Dorico SE on a clean test volume), but I’d say it is more responsive than Catalina.
Wow, folks. I came here because I wanted to, you know, know if Dorico would run on Big Sur. Thank you benwiggy for actually commenting on this question.
Is there any way this thread could maybe be retitled or something? All the talk on the immediate tangent (though certainly relevant, still a tangent from the so clearly stated question) is phenomenally distracting and strains my confidence in any web forum or the web itself.
Sorry, hopefully I’ll stop being a cranky jerk for the rest of the day.
Well, of course, we won’t really know what works and what doesn’t work until ‘BS’ is released. Last year, the Dorico team released a ‘quick fix’ update to smooth over the few issues of Catalina when it was released, and who knows whether one will be necessary this year.
I’ve since ‘gone beyond’ using a test volume, and Dorico Pro still seems to work without issue. As ever, I wouldn’t recommend upgrading OS till at least the .1 update.
“It will all work. But not necessarily today.”
If this forum strains your confidence in the web, stay away from most of the others! 
lol. no kidding.
And not necessarily for the current definition of “work” 
I planned to buy the model with new Apple Silicon,
but things happened recently had forced me to buy an intel MacBook Pro 2020 (13-inch).
The 16-inch 2019 model has VRAM overheating issue (except HBM2 VRAM models)
which significantly reduces 50% of base CPU efficiency.
Still, Dorico runs good on it (32GB RAM and better CPU performance than 2017 MacBook Pro 15-inch).
My only choice now is to use this combination to profit as much as I can.
Never buy the first one! 
Always wait for the 2nd generation of any major Apple hardware change.
There’s alway something in the design that needs working out, or it lacks some standard that a future OS requires.
Any update ?
What are you asking, specifically? Dorico 3.5.10 runs with no known problems on Big Sur on Intel hardware, but not on Apple Silicon-based Macs. And you should carefully check the compatibility of any virtual instruments and plug-ins that you rely upon. For example, at the time of writing, Kontakt isn’t supported on Big Sur.
I’ve been running SoundIron’s Requiem Light in Kontact on Dorico in Big Sur for some time, and it’s all been working fine. I appreciate that ‘supported’ and ‘working for me’ are two different things, though.
Hi Daniel,
I was wondering about Dorico 3.5 running on Big Sur / Intel. Thanks for the quick reply and congratulations on the tremendous job you guys have done.
Cheers
Hey Daniel.
Are you working on recompiling Dorico for Apple Silicon? Is it a big difficult operation or is it imminent?
Magnus
Welcome to the forum, Magnus. We will in future produce native Apple Silicon builds (actually Universal Binary versions for both Intel and Apple Silicon), but this isn’t going to happen imminently. It’s not trivial because Dorico is a large-scale application with a number of significant dependencies: not only does Dorico itself have to be recompiled for Apple Silicon (which has presented no big problems to date), but also the Qt application framework on which it relies (you can build the current version, Qt 5.15.1, on Apple Silicon but this is not an officially supported configuration), and also the Cubase audio engine, HALion Sonic SE, and all of the other VST plug-in effects that are included with the software. This is a significant engineering effort and also a significant testing effort. As things stand, our plan is for the next major version of Dorico to be a Universal Binary with native support for both Intel and Apple Silicon. This will come some time in 2021.
In the meantime we are exploring whether it is possible to get the current version of Dorico running under Rosetta 2. At the moment, it doesn’t, for a variety of reasons. As and when we have any news on this front you can be sure we will let everybody know.
Daniel, I wanted to tell you that your open and transparent answers are a great example of professional follow-up with customers. We really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for the reply, Daniel. As a matter of fact my new Mac Mini with the Apple Silicon M1 CPU arrived just now. And the first thing i had to check out was if it was possible to install Dorico. And to my big surprise, after reading your reply earlier, it actually worked. Sound, playback and everything. Is it supposed to work?
Of course it seemed a tiny bit unstable at first. But it seems like it can be used nevertheless.
That’s really interesting, Magnus. Dorico does not run on the developer hardware we’ve been working with, so it’s surprising but welcome news that it runs on your new Mac Mini. We will be receiving some of the production machines soon and we will do some testing as soon as possible.
There is a reason why it wasn’t stable at first: That was the time when Rosetta 2 was translating Intel-CPU-oriented binaries to compatible binaries. This translation runs just one time.
By the way, are you using eLicenser dongle or soft-eLicenser?
Thanks to Daniel helping me removing my previous reply.
Discussions regarding Apple DTK models are not allowed (by Apple).
Looking forward to their further good news with their new machines.
That explains it. I was using a 7 day trial soft-eLicenser just now. I just ordered the dongle so that i can transfer my license from my old MacBook Pro and use it on the new workstation.