I read all the time how nice it is to have Dorico on the iPad together with the Desktop version, so that you can also work while being on the road, for example.
Unfortunately I’m one of these users who do not want any Apple device, so I’m not able to join this group of happy users.
For me it would be extremely nice to have Dorico on an Android device, so it would be fantastic if there are any plans in Development to support Android tablets.
I’m copy-and-pasting previous comments made by Daniel:
“For the time being, we have no plans to introduce Dorico for any other platforms: I’m sorry, fans and users of iPhones, Android phones, Android tablets and Chromebooks. At least for now, we don’t have sufficient man- and woman-power to extend Dorico on to any other platforms. Although we are not ruling this out forever, it’s not something you should expect any time soon.”
“There are many difficulties in supporting the Android platform: infinite varieties of hardware, massive software fragmentation, generally very poor audio performance, much lower revenues for independent software developers, etc. etc. It took the Cubasis team nine years before they released a version of Cubasis that supports Android, and there are many good reasons for that.”
To be honest, I would like to avoid the discussion about Apple or not Apple. I’m simply not buying anything from them, regardless what it is (I had a lot of Apple stuff in the past). Even then, I guess Dorico would be forcing me into iCloud and I’m clearly not doing that.
Because to me it looks like everything is targeting Apple first and then may be something else. Luckily Dorico and Cubase are products running on both platforms, so that is no problem for me. But may other products are targeted for Apple only.
That all is my personal feeling, so no need to get into this deep philosophical discussion about Apple or Microsoft. I’ve worked in the software industry for three decades and had many of these talks.
However I appreciate your response. I love Dorico, but I would love it even more if I had an Android release of it
+1 for running on a Windows tablet. In fact, it would be an advantage because you’re running the full version of Dorico, no compromises or constraints (e.g., only getting 2-12 voices)
The Android/Chrome/Chromebook world is the largest ecosystem out there by far. Google is later to the game with the full-function environment (ChromeOS), but it is evolving rapidly, and essentially is a robust Linux system with the Google UI layer. And that’s not much different from the modern IOS base.
In my case, I don’t like paying a 50-100% markup for equivalent function. I have had an Android phone since Palm was no longer viable and would never consider an Apple phone. I have a great 5G Moto phone that I got on sale for under $200. Why would I want to pay $1200?
More recently, I have evolved all my PA and live recording gear to be controlled entirely through Chromebooks or Android tablets. (I have a small sound company.) This works very reliably, costs a fraction of what the Apple infrastructure would cost for the same capability, and is easy to manage.
I still have all my home-based technology on Windows platforms and see no reason to change that as I get 10 years of useful life from those products with very few problems.
Am I a bigot? Do I have a grudge? I don’t think so. I just like to keep my life as simple as possible and look for the best value when buying things. So I will never be an Apple customer. They are not looking for customers like me.
Considering that the Android/Chrome/Chromebook is so much larger globally than the Apple ecosystem, I do hope there comes a time that I can have Dorico on a Chrome tablet. But I can live without that for now and fully appreciate Daniel’s comments about having to make decisions within the available resources. We all face those same decisions.
Anyway, no big message here other than I wish everyone the best of the season.
Sorry. Of course you were referring to Apple, but I see the quote doesn’t make that as clear. I was just trying to avoid having a very large quote repeated.
It indicates Android as a supported platform, but I don’t see ChromeOS referenced anywhere. But they can certainly support Linux, and you can run Linux apps on a Chromebook, so maybe that is a course that will make sense to Steinberg at some point.
Qt does support Android, and indeed Steinberg produces its Cubasis DAW for Android as well as for iOS. We have certainly considered building Dorico for Android, but the experience we have so far with Cubasis for Android suggests that, despite the installed base of Android devices being larger than iOS devices in the world, the return on investment would be many times lower than it would be on iOS, and that makes it hard to justify given our small development team that is already spread pretty thinly over the three platforms we support (even with all of the invaluable help that being able to build on Qt provides).
We certainly don’t rule it out, but it’s not something we are likely to be working on in the immediate future.