The Dorico page at the Steinberg Online Shop works perfectly (MacOS Sierra on a Mac Mini with Firefox). I missed seeing educational pricing, however, and it certainly would have helped immensely to have pre-order capability given the two-day-ish wait for crossgrade verification.
What is the time-span for crossgrade-pricing, and will this time-window extend to the time when chords, cue notes, full lyrics implementation, etc. are added? The crossgrade offer, by the way, cinches my decision to buy now rather than wait for much, much later when early-adopter growing pains are lessened, and I am happy to do so.
No amount of beta-testing can do the job that can and is being done in any software by the general-user-base hive-mind with its infinite kaleidoscope of operating system vagaries, computers of all ages, input devices, output devices, country/connection quirks, and on-and-on. There is also the question of marketing timing, and as much as I expect Daniel and company would have loved to hold release until January or later to get in needed things such as chords, but I expect Steinberg had the last word on that and wished for a fourth-quarter release.
I could not agree more. Many tweaks and improvements with Finale were as a direct result, I think, of the work the old Sibelius team did on that product, and new they’ve gone to a different company and are raising the bar even higher. I’ve not used the software yet, but from what I’ve seen from videos and interviews, I’ve much to look forward to even at this early stage.