Android version - coming soon!

Yes I am serious , this isnā€™t about phones this is about a system the will allow an easy upgrade of apps further down the road and the win tablets are the way forward . Ipad for you mac pro - win tablet for you i7 , android is now the fish out of water in this game. Steinberg missed the boat on this .

Android isnā€™t dead in the water. Itā€™s the biggest portable OS out there. Will Win/Win RT expand in the marketplace? No doubt, but itā€™ll still be a while.

I do however agree that Steinbergā€™s priorities are bizarre. Very bizarre even.

Yes, but Iā€™m pretty sure that things are going to change soon. Remember what we wanted when the iPad was introduced: laptop power in a smaller, lighter, more portable form factor. Since at that time it was an impossible feat, basically Apple went about a decade in the past with much inferior computing power and put in a PHONE operating system. Android was developed with the same concept in mind. Which means that none of these OSā€™s can develop much more than theyā€™ve already done. Now that 8-inch Win 8.1 tablets with Bay Trail are finally available (end of this month), the old dream of having a REAL computer in one hand is finally coming true and Iā€™m pretty sure that sooner or later people will realize how primitive iOS and Android are compared to a fully-functional OS like Windows. Heck, even simple file management on iOS and Android is a hassle. Again, because they are PHONE operating systems and they were never meant to do anything harder than social media, video playing, e-book reading, email etc.

A Bay Trail tablet can actually run Cubase 7. What other tablet can do that? (I mean aside from i5 tablets, of course, but those will cost substantially more.)

I understand what youā€™re saying. The problem is that right now Android is the biggest ā€œportableā€ OS. People buy Android devices because theyā€™re the best value out there, and they buy them for general computing. People buy Apple for the style, for general computing, and it is also overrepresented in our industry (compared to general marketshare).

But where does that leave Windows? In our industry itā€™d compete with Apple products. And we all know how fond many people are of their iWhatevers. Not that people wonā€™t buy Win tablets, they will, but not in huge numbers all of a sudden. And similarly people wonā€™t all of a sudden get rid of their general computing Android tablets either, because they were bought because they were cheap relative to Appleā€™s devices.

I too think itā€™ll change, but my point was that Android isnā€™t ā€œdead in the waterā€ now. I think weā€™ll see big change once larger corporations start adopting Windows 8.x. Then people will be trying the new OS whether they like it or not, and IT people will start integrating other devices that represent the path of least resistance, i.e. RT tablets and Win phones.

So on second thought it was a tough choice for Steinberg in deciding which OS to focus on. iOS which is used a lot in media industries? Android which has the biggest market share? Windows which will be a strong contender in the future? Iā€™d say Windows would have been the least smart choice simply because the market isnā€™t there yet, and thereā€™s still time to port over to it. Will they? Who knows.

Yeah, Balmer had a little help sacking himself because he was so on target with the windows mobile strategy. You keep waiting for that Windows Surface revolution. Oh and the dev community is sure buying in ā€¦ yep ā€¦ they love Surface + Modern ā€¦ uh well maybe not.

Coming soon? :slight_smile:

So, when? :slight_smile:

+1 for when? Why this wasnā€™t a parallel build of all platforms is beyond me. In what magical business world does a company ignore the platform or possible customer base that is in the majority. I must applaud Apples marketing as it must be the best marketing ever. Iā€™d say they went 110% and that is actually impossible even though personal trainers and executive team builder tell you otherwise. Apple have managed it.
I think it will probably be released in the future as itā€™s very hard to make things happen in the past. Thatā€™s just a guess though. Though if we got Apples marketing team on it , they would be able to manage 110% into the future. This would mean that we would shoot past the future and end up at the beginning , which will allow us to come hammering up our own backsides and deliver an android and windows version. Now wouldnā€™t that be nice.

Steinberg! Give us done kind of update on this, please!

+1 on an updateā€¦

Iā€™ve always seen musicians as a practical bunch. Using a tablet instead of a laptop is a ā€œpracticalā€ thing: when youā€™re gigging, you want to get rid of as much excess baggage as you can. But until now, it came at a price: you couldnā€™t use your regular DAW, you had to settle for something that wasnā€™t even as good as the ā€œliteā€ version. So, it was Cubasis instead of Cubase and GarageBand instead of Logic. HUGE difference. Apple is now making a fuss about the latest GB being able to use up to a whopping 32 tracksā€¦ Wow. Are we back to 1985? :unamused:

So, the next ā€œpracticalā€ thing would be to have a tablet thatā€™s just as small, light and ultraportable, but that can actually run the SAME DAW you use on your desktop/laptop every day in your studio. With the sole exception of Windows RT tablets (Iā€™ve never understood why people would want to buy a ā€œWindows liteā€ deviceā€¦), every Win 8.1 tablet can do that, and IMHO it wonā€™t be long before musicians start to realize that.

I have a song here which uses 39 tracks alone for drums and percussion. :smiley:

Show off!! :laughing:

Itā€™s just a lazy way to work, in my opinion.

Routed everything out from BFD 3, Geist and Battery, so I can handle all the volumes and fx (automationā€¦) from the mix console.

Thats what the mix console is for, if you ask me. I would prefer plugins to route everything to separate outputs right from the start anyway. Iā€™m a lazy guy.

I think you might be overestimating the amount of people that are going top dump their Desktops, laptops and platform to go use a tablet. Not everyone is on the move with their music stuff either. Even a laptop has a larger screen to work with. Storage? connectivity? etc etc etc. If you already have a bunch of gear that you have to move then a laptop is not that much of a hassle really and it has many advantages.
Android has a long way to go before it decides Microsoft are the bees knees and turns itā€™s toes up.

I agree with you to the extent that there is great potential there and the points you make are relevant. I just donā€™t think itā€™s going to be that fast or easy a decision for the majority of folk.

And this DAW will look and feel like Cubasis or GarageBand or it wonā€™t work. You technically might be able to run a regular DAW on a tablet but it will be absolutely unuseable.

Simple experiment: Cut a piece of paper (A4 or letter) in half and tape it to your screen. Now resize the main window of your DAW until itā€™s exactly the size of the paper. Remove the paper and look at how a regular DAW will look like on a 10" tablet.

But I hear you: ā€œModern tablets have a higher resolution than that!ā€. OK, another experiment. Take a screenshot of the maximized DAW window and open it in the picture viewer of your choice. Now adjust the zoom level until the image fits the size of the paper from the first experiment. Much better: You will see a lot more from the arrangement and more plugins but now try to image how you would edit this song with your fingers and note how huge even the tip of your pinkie is compared to the buttons and knobs on the screen.

Iā€™ve no doubt that the DAW makers will improve tablet usability but this will always be a compromise. There is no way around it: Tablets need tablet DAWs.

This is Karl Ranseier on your profile picture, right? :wink:

I think that DAWs have to be reconsidered anyway. While the ā€œbandmachineā€ idea surely can act as a starting point for non linear work (like we do with Cubase et al today), I think the future will bring more ā€œhands onā€ concepts, like ā€œcombining partial patterns into songsā€, would work like this:

  1. You record 4 measures of acoustic guitar strumming
  2. Actually you record 6 measures, but treat it like 4
  3. You can combine 3x6 measures into 12 (not 18) and all that

And you will be able to work on tracks in those patterns, etcā€¦

But, back to topic:

Come on, Steinberg, I want to give you MOAR money!!

Karl Ranseier is deadā€¦ :cry:

Lots of people swear by their MBA 11" being an excellent ultraportable solution. And you think that a Surface Pro 2 or equivalent Windows 8.1 tablet wouldnā€™t cut it? Why? Itā€™s the same screen size, only that the Windows tablets come with a higher resolution (i.e. more display real estate), a touch screen and a digitizer, which make handling tiny details a lot easier. Not to mention that, for example, Sonar is already multi-touch friendly and Iā€™m sure other DAWā€™s will soon follow.

Because you donā€™t have to operate your 11" MBA with a 2.5" by 0.5" sized mouse cursor (your finger). If you move your tiny tiny mouse cursor on a high resolution screen and use a lot of keyboard shortcuts then it might work. If you start to attach mouse and keyboard to a tablet then you donā€™t need a tablet.

Iā€™m not saying that a regular Windows 8 is useless. Iā€™m just saying that some people here overestimate the need for such a tablet by far.