Might be that the majority of what people want/need on Android is ‘free’ or ‘very cheap’. Most I’ve ever paid for an Android app was like $15 annually for a ‘yearly subscription’.
I don’t attempt much in terms of music apps because there is only one port on my devices, haven’t even tried to find nice/serious audio interfaces for it, and I haven’t seriously looked into hardware for stuff like Blue Tooth MIDI connections and such. I’ve run tuners, db meters and such (all free or dirt cheap to the tune of under $5.00 US), a bit of WAN based OSC touch controlling is about it so far. The largest screen on an android I have are larger model Kindles (Are those even powerful/fast enough to run something like Cubasis, or Dorico? They were almost dirt cheap, and I treat them like glorified eReaders and Movie players that can also play a few games, browse the web, and run some basic Office or Lifestyle Management apps.)
Do the ‘statistics’ include exactly what people are buying/downloading?
On the one hand, I’m sympathetic to your observation. On the other, you may be ignoring the fact that there may not even be a critical mass of android tablet users to justify the expense and effort of developing the app on a fourth platform. Yes, dorico users with android tablets would very likely be willing to pay at parity with their iOS counterparts. Fair. But that doesn’t mean that there is a parity of size for this specific set of users. And even if there was, this doesn’t account for the fact that the effort required to develop and support various platforms is not the same, either.
Yes, you are totally right on this. And for sure I have not the slightest idea about this number you are talking about
All I was saying is that the differences in spending per platform across the whole globe just does not matter for the discussion. The number of people on Android tablets on the other hand… Totally different story. Good point!
My experience with Android thus far…it makes sense as to why there isn’t an Android version, and might not ever be (unless some things change with the maturity and methodology of how audio is done in Android across the board).
There are literally THOUSANDS of very ‘different/unique’ devices out there running ‘customized’ variants of Android…so the OS is hacked to Hades and back. Many components required to get something like Dorio running might not be present at all, and the device is often ‘locked down’ in a way that users, or app-package developers cannot add them either!
To find hardware nice enough to run demanding software (particularly if it involves audio, and other multi-media), it quickly gets to be as expensive as an iPad. Even then there are problems/differences with the OS itself. Audio drivers and such for Android aren’t all that good, so many common Android devices ‘hack in’ their own rendition of the drivers in a way that might be quite difficult for an app like Dorico to develop for.
I.E. Getting Dorico to work with a specific ‘upper range’ make and model of Android device would be quite doable. That same app working on any of the thousands of devices out there? Not very likely at present.
The device drivers and such should remain pretty consistent across the different iPad models. If a given Apple device can’t run Dorico, it’s much easier to figure that out and tag it as such right there in the App Store. There aren’t as many models to test out in a lab. Dorico can say up front, “This should work on all iOS models ‘except’ those on this list…”
Google Play does allow limiting apps in the store based on hardware and OS requirements, but if there are less than a dozen ‘supported’ models on the market, and they all cost as much as an iPad, might as well just grab an iPad?
Windows for ARM should be an option in the not so distant future (some probably already have it working?), but that’s a whole different level/class of hardware, with a lot more ‘rules’ than Android currently has when ‘designing and building’ hardware for it. The good stuff capable of powering through an App like Dorico will easily rival iPads, or Mac OS tablets in price.
Have a look in the Google Play store, there are several reader apps, like PlayScore2 or Capella Reader. There are more around but I know these two apps
There are some decent ones for the money (Typically under $20 US), but they’re quite basic when compared to something like Dorico or Sibelius, and are more or less in a world of their own.
There are a few different categories…As in apps meant to simply store and display music catalogued as pdf/png/tiff/etc. files. Digitize your sheet music and carry it with you for viewing on a device.
Then there are various attempts at a full blown scoring app with composing/editing tools, playback capabilities and such.
Some can even attempt to import/export Music XML. I’ve had pretty good luck with this one: A-Score Music Notation - Apps on Google Play, which evolved from earlier versions of Choconne. It’s good enough to tap in ideas when I’m on the go, and export it into something I can pull into Dorico or Sibelius later. Note, I haven’t used it in a while to see how it copes with trying to import something built in Dorico (such as an exported XML score/part). Best way to find out would be give it a try.
You might do some web searches on the topic, as there is no shortage of run downs and reviews of scoring apps out there for Android and iOS.
Well thats a shame steinberg doesnt care about the many who are already neck deep in the android ecosystem . You realize many do not like the proprietary nature of ipad OS and how overpriced apple is. Fortunately i do have a surface pro and use both windows and android ,but now i think ill have to check out sibelius since sibelius seems to really be more universal than dorico.
Did you read Brian Rolands post above that starts with this quote? It has nothing to do with Steinberg’s not caring about android users but just the impossibility of trying to deal with the messy android OS ecosystem.
Out of curiosity, why would you want an Android version if you already own a surface pro?
I have a surface pro also, and am wondering if I want to install Dorico on it.
As an android tablet owner it would be great if the majority of the world had access to a mobile Dorico…but for now I use Presonus Notion Mobile and export the musicxml to Dorico…it works great!
I looked into an android score reader and mobilesheets seems to be the best for using with PDFs. It is crossplatform (MacOS, iOS, Android, and Windows), and allows for marking up the score (and syncing them across devices), setting a metronome, setlists (with different metronome settings for each song), omitting/duplicating pages, etc.
