I know the Dorico team is probably not used to getting forum posts like this, but I just wanted to say how much I love Dorico! Steinberg and Dorico support are the best! Keep up the awesome work that you all do!
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They get these messages more often than you might suppose, due to their hard work on the software and near miraculous support on the forum.
Kudos! 
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That’s great!
Condensing and beaming are a bit sketchy. Moreover, a lot of time has been spent developing the iPad version, for which a fair amount of users will have no use. I am thankful and will support the software by purchasing future upgrades and recommending Dorico to others. But, I’m also waiting for significant new features and functionality. That “big list” is in the hands of the developers.
I don’t have much use for guitar tab notation either, but it’s none of my business to tell them where to deploy their resources.
Yes total kudos to the Dorico team! I’ve been working with it more then ever, and am continually amazed at how deep this program is. Every time it seems I want to do something there’s a helper or neat solution.
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That goes for several features of Dorico itself. Like the iPad version, many aspects of the software used by many composers and transcribers are of little or no interest to a sizable count of other users. Some people still complain that the developers spend too much time on playback; fortunately, Daniel Spreadbury and company appear not to have let that sentiment diminish their commitment to that side of the application.
Clearly, the iPad version has seen a lot of use. There were consistently so many posts about it that I had to mute the “dorico-for-ipad” tag in my notification preferences.
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The pace of development has been so fast and with so many world-beating features (Figured Bass, Condensing, Flow Headings) that we’ve been spoilt. Am I right that Dorico is not yet 5 years old?
Of course there’s more to be done (and don’t forget that they managed to knock out the iPad version while working remotely) and there’s stuff that each of us wants to see implemented or perfected. And even for those who don’t want the iPad version, there’s lots in that work that will find its way to the desktop.
Some people in another place seem needlessly angry in their permanent dissatisfaction (or vice versa); but it’s always good to enjoy what you have.
Dorico remains one of the few apps that brings me joy when I use it. (“Oh, it’s that easy/straightforward/good!”)
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Example of little amazing things I just ran across. I want time codes each bar for video game music to watch my cues. Turns out there’s a timecode staff I can display, and I can pretty much put it anywhere, cool! That’s perfect. Oops, but now I get collisions with other notations (e.g. dynamics from the staff above). Turns out I can increase the time code staff only vertical spacing a bit. Done!
Constantly finding little solutions like this …
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Whenever I boot up Dorico 3.5, the splash screen greets me with the words “Advanced Music Notation System” (emphasis mine). To me, the word “Notation” conjures up visions of the best available contemporary and traditional music engraving. That’s my specialty. Dorico isn’t there yet. Just want to clarify my comments.
Absolutely! I especially like how everything is organized and in the unlikely event you need to find something their help file and videos are second to none.
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You don’t find Dorico the best available music engraver? (If not, is this a common view? I was under the impression that Dorico is the best available application for engraving music, and for notation generally.)
As for the term “Music Notation System,” to most musicians, I think this is more like the words “phone” or “drugstore / chemist.” In modern parlance, “notation system” means much more than just putting stuff on staves.
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Some folks just seem set on complaining and will even crash a “thank you” thread to do so. It is sad, since the same individual has taken plenty of other opportunities to make his dissatisfaction known,
Dorico is not (yet) perfect, but it is not asking too much to say thank you to those who create and support it.
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I would have to agree with @notesetter that development of the ipad version has probably delayed the D4 upgrade.
But not the point of this thread, right?
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Sure, but so what? Plenty of the stuff in the iPad app is coming to Big Dorico, so it’s not like the development time has been wasted for customers that don’t have (or intend to buy) iPads.
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Oh god this whole discussion is so pathetic (not talking to you Leo or Derrek! Just the back seat drivers). You guys ever worked in software teams for big companies? How many years? Yeah you have no idea what you’re talking about. Been in them for 30 years in 3 continents, and I wouldn’t be foolish enough to opine whether it slowed them down or not. See kids, sometimes teams get stale, right? So a project like this is maybe a shot in the arm, cheers everybody up and overall is actually faster because it’s so cool? that’s just one effect. It gets tiresome after a while, pouring your heart into an application just to get belittled by (some) of your users. We’ve done the same damn thing (ported to iPad) and had that effect, among others, including finding many bugs just because it was on a new platform
</rant off> Really guys, just get off of it, you don’t know what you’re talking about and are just looking foolish.
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Whatever brings in revenue for Dorico is going to benefit its entire user base. I might use iPad once in a blue moon, but I’m rooting for this recent release, which is probably very strategic.
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The ‘what’ is that the D4 upgrade would probably have appeared some four months ago. I’m not complaining. Just observing.
I don’t really see how the development team can win this one. If they hadn’t put out Dorico for iPad but the purple competitor had released theirs, people would be moaning that Steinberg were falling behind.
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It’s not the case that Dorico for iPad has delayed the release of Dorico 4. In fact we chose to work on Dorico for iPad precisely because Dorico 4 was already delayed by a number of other factors.
For example, one such factor is the ongoing work on the Steinberg-wide initiative to replace the unpopular eLicenser software activation system, a project that is being led by the head of the Dorico team and to which several members of the Dorico team (including two of our most senior developers, our lead tester, and yours truly) are making significant contributions. We have stepped up to play our part in this project because it is of vital importance to the whole company, and the sooner the new activation system is in place, the better it will be for all of our customers.
Another factor is that we are in the middle of the most significant architecture transition for nearly two decades, with Apple – whose computers are used by more than half of Dorico users – switching to ARM-based architecture. Dorico is a complex application that brings together disparate technologies and components built by multiple teams within Steinberg, including the Cubase audio engine, HALion sampler, Core Audio/ASIO system components, the shared video engine, more than 30 VST plug-ins, plus a number of components that are developed by third parties, including codecs for different audio and video formats. Dozens of engineers around the company have to play a part in porting and testing these technologies and components, and not all of them are so straightforward to port as Dorico (i.e. they are not all written in modern C++ with all of their code less than 10 years old).
Yet a third factor is that at the same time the underlying Qt application framework that Dorico relies upon is in the middle of its own once-in-a-decade transition as it evolves from Qt 5 to Qt 6. We have to make a careful judgement about when to move up to the new version, which has not only technical considerations but also commercial ones. This also requires coordination with other teams around Steinberg with whom we share technology.
So in fact we identified in 2020 that for these, and other, reasons, there would very likely be a longer interval between Dorico 3.5 and Dorico 4 than we would ideally prefer, and we decided that one of the most productive ways we could spend some of this time would be to open up the use of Dorico to a whole new set of customers. We love and value all of our existing customers for Dorico on macOS and Windows, but it is also our responsibility to find ways to grow and expand our user base and therefore our revenue.
It’s no secret that it is difficult to convert the hundreds of thousands of users of existing music notation software to use Dorico – many of them have decades of use of another application under their belts and ingrained into their muscle memory, and each of them needs to find only one reason not to switch, no matter how many good reasons there may be to try a new application. So while we are pleased with Dorico’s growth – I am certain that it is the fastest growing music notation application on the market – we hope that we can also reach a new set of customers who are not so tied by decades of history to an existing music notation app on their iPads, and we will be able not only to grow that user base in its own right and over time develop revenue from those users, but also that some percentage of them will also buy and use Dorico on their desktop computers.
Of course it is the case that we could have chosen not to work on Dorico for iPad during this period, and instead devote all of our time purely to adding features only to the desktop version. But that is the nature of all human endeavour: opportunity cost is everywhere, in every single decision each of us makes in our lives. Choosing to do one thing results in being unable to simultaneously do another thing.
We think hard about what to do and when to do it. We may not, with the benefit of hindsight, always get every decision perfectly correct. But we are juggling an enormous number of competing priorities and demands, both internal and external, and doing our best to make the right decision for the product, for the company, and for our customers.
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