Any plan to make free updates available more frequently so users can take advantage of bug fixes? One advantage that Dorico should have over its competitors is that it’s a new actively developed app, which means taking advantage of modern agile practices like frequent releases, rather than the few times a year approach we’ve seen thus far from Dorico. For example, the Reaper DAW often releases a new version with fixes every 2 weeks that is free to current users.
I for one am happy with the way the Dorico Team does it now.
eboats, We receive multiple updates per version cycle. One has been previously announced as “before the end of the year” (so you can, in theory, expect one soon). On average, there has been an update every 4 months or so. That in mind, I hardly think the team keeps us waiting unduly long.
Each Dorico update
a) brings features that require the development team to spend considerable time on this forum, particularly given that the manual doesn’t keep up with updates (and some people seem incapable of reading the Version History). Development team here = development team not working on the next update.
b) is tested internally and then by a team of beta testers, who presumably also have to ask questions and make suggestions.
I don’t know how Reaper’s developers ship out updates as quickly as they do (unless they’re largely bugfixes), but, to me, Dorico’s pace of development doesn’t feel slow.
If you want regular updates from a notation app, use Musescore, You can get a new version literally every 24 hours if that turns you on. By the time you have discovered what they just broke in the latest version, there will be another one for you to debug.
FWIW the version of Reaper I’m actually using is dated 2015. When I want to do something it can’t do, THEN I’ll think about upgrading.
I just looked at the Reaper version history and it has been FOUR YEARS between major versions (5.0 and 6.0). They push out every little change as a separate release, but so what?
There are those who say that a quicker release schedule often reduces overall quality. Demonstrable, they would say, even in the case of companies that are absurdly wealthy with no other limits than time.
Didn’t Cakewalk go to monthly updates of Sonar–before they went out of business and sold the program to a company that AFAIK has not upgraded it since?
[Let me also politely suggest: to each their own I suppose. I have no desire whatsoever to download a new DMG and reinstall dorico every fortnight. I’ve got many other things to do.]
Short answer: no, we don’t anticipate dramatically increasing our release cadence in the near future.
That’s unfortunate, the rest of the software world has moved to more frequent releases rather than the old school waterfall approach of loading up a release with 6 months of fixes. Why would users want more frequent releases? How about because we want fixes to annoying bugs as soon as they are ready, not in 4 months.
There’s a difference between bugs and a few people experiencing problems on their setups.
I was experiencing problems after upgrading to v3 and Catalina (mac), as were others, and within a few weeks a big fix came out. Evidently there are some people that are experiencing problems - OP, I assume you must be one of them. That must suck 
I assume, however, that there are thousands of users like me who are using Dorico daily, pretty much trouble free. I must say that I do check the forum daily for the anticipated release of an update: not for bug fixes but rather the multitude of new features that will be included.
I do hope you can work out the problems soon…
*bug
There has rarely been anything close to six months between Dorico releases. Here are the dates on which each of the publicly-released versions were built (the public release dates always following within one week of this date):
1.0: 16 Oct 2016
1.0.10: 23 Nov 2016 (5 weeks)
1.0.20: 13 Dec 2016 (3 weeks)
1.0.30: 22 Feb 2017 (10 weeks)
1.1: 22 Jun 2017 (17 weeks)
1.1.10: 23 Aug 2017 (8 weeks)
1.2: 3 Dec 2017 (14 weeks)
1.2.10: 22 Feb 2018 (11 weeks)
2.0: 24 May 2018 (13 weeks)
2.1: 13 Aug 2018 (11 weeks)
2.1.10: 17 Sep 2018 (5 weeks)
2.1.20: 3 Oct 2018 (2 weeks)
2.2: 27 Nov 2018 (8 weeks)
2.2.10: 31 Jan 2019 (9 weeks)
2.2.20: 23 Apr 2019 (11 weeks)
3.0: 3 Sep 2019 (19 weeks)
3.0.10: 7 Oct 2019 (5 weeks)
As I write this, it has been 9 weeks since the last release, and it will be only another few weeks before the next one. As you can see, the longest gap between any two releases was between Dorico 2.2.20 and Dorico 3.0, and that gap was only 19 weeks, or around 4 months. The median time between releases is around 9 weeks. I feel that this is a pretty frequent release schedule already. Can you name any other comparably sophisticated cross-platform commeercial desktop application that delivers releases on a schedule with a shorter median time between releases than 9 weeks? If so, I wonder how many people are working on that product?
I am extremely happy at the speed of releases. I personally don’t wish to have a faster release cycle if it compromises the stability of the program, and I disagree with the statement that “the rest of the software world has moved on to more frequent releases.” It certainly isn’t my experience of most of the software that I use.
Personally, absolutely satisfied by the speed of release. The team is doing a fantastic job : each release contains new valuable functionalities, not only bug fixes, this in few weeks every time.
And can we not lose sight of the glorious fact that Dorico is AMAZING and its competitors are probably saying, over and over again, “I wish we would have done it that way.” (And the “it” is basically every feature implementation in Dorico.)
I get a bit wary of software that’s being updated every other week. If the intention is to deliver a message that “we’re really on top of this thing”, the fact that it’s having to be updated every other week suggests otherwise.
I’m sorry, but I’ve been a software developer for over 30 years and this is just a cheap, uninformed shot (how do you know if they use a waterfall model?) If you think you know how to build and ship sophisticated notation software every week, have at it. Otherwise leave it to the pros.
Dorico team’s release pace and feature delivery rate is top notch, that all in addition to the excessive level of consideration that is evident in each new feature.
I may still be waiting for my pet features (playback and expression maps) to get their turn, but I’d not complain about Dorico’s release rate or quality.
(We don’t use a Waterfall Model)
This is an interesting perspective. It does seem a slightly odd thing to have to release maintenance updates every few days (ios apps anyone??) because it appears that the developers can only put out one little fire at a time and not release a large & stable build. I have much more confidence in a company like Dorico, that releases a large update that is functional and stable and doesn’t need a million patches to make it continue to function, than in many other app developers that do it the other way. Ultimately, I’m no a developer so I’m not qualified to complain (nor am I inclined to, as stated previously in this thread).
In fact, I appreciate Dorico’s development at this time of year more than any other: it is nearly this time last year that I wrote on the forum about my Christmas mass mishap where I had printed some scores for trumpet players that, I came to find out the hard way, were not transposed. A thread by myself as well as another similar thread resulted in the new warning dialogue that prevents you from accidentally printing transposed parts at concert pitch. I am STILL grateful for this feature which popped up for me yet again as I reviewed some of my arrangements from last year. I am terribly grateful that the dev. team listens to us here and there are “tangible” results to prove it.