This week on Music Ed Tech Talk I am joined by Joe Plazak, Principal Software Engineer and Designer of Sibelius, to talk all about their summer iPad release.
Listen below or in the podcast app of your choice! I look forward to writing more about Sibelius for iPad down the road.
Episode Description: Joe Plazak (Principal Software Engineer and Designer) joins the show to talk about Sibelius for Mobile and their new iPad app.
This episode is sponsored by Blink Session Music: Because Virtual Lessons Are More Than a Video Chat.
Backstage Access Patreon Subscribers can listen to extended discussion including Joe Plazak’s Book of the Week and some of my reflections on writing Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers.
And just like that, Sibelius has their own iPad app. This comes after yesterday’s news that Dorico has released a desktop-class iPad app. If you want to learn more about that, click that link. I have some early first impressions, a video, and a podcast interview with Product Marketing Manager Daniel Spreadbury.
I don’t have much to say about Sibelius coming to iPad because I didn’t have any access to it before today, and because it hasn’t been my primary notation editor for years. But from 30 minutes of playing with it, it is pretty powerful and will certainly offer competition in this space, which is good! I want pro iPad apps to get better. The thing that is most impressive about it is how well adapted to the iPad it appears. It has multitasking, Files app integration, and some really intuitive touch/Apple Pencil touch gestures for note input that offer a new kind of ease and accuracy I wasn’t quite expecting.
You can watch a First Look video from Scoring Notes below and read their review here. You can download Sibelius for iPad here.
Five years ago, StaffPad came to Windows Surface tablets. StaffPad is a professional music notation application that turns handwritten notes into beautiful music notation. It is built around the stylus being the primary input, and because the iPad did not have stylus support at launch, StaffPad remained Windows only.
Multiple years into Apple supporting its own official stylus, the Apple Pencil, StaffPad is finally here on iPad!
Since the features of StaffPad are covered in the links above, I want to comment on two interesting aspects of this release.
First, the price. At $89.99, this is no impulse purchase. I find it refreshing to see a professionally priced app like this on the App Store. For years, the App Store has seen a race to the bottom type approach for grabbing sales. Users are so used to <5 dollar apps that the idea of paying for software has diminished from reality.
Increasingly, developers are finding that subscription based pricing is the only way to maintain software and put food on the table. There was a big discussion about this in the Apple community last week when beloved calendar application Fantastical released their version 3 and went to subscription pricing. As is customary when an app goes to subscription pricing, users of the application and bystanders alike were enraged at the idea of a calendar costing four dollars a month.
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">I couldn’t resist sneaking my love of Fantastical into this post. The interface is beautiful.</p></div>
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">And the natural language input is one of many essential features that helps me get my work done more efficiently.</p></div>
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As a user of Fantastical, I was happy to keep supporting development. It is one of my most used applications on a daily basis and its features are essential to me having a full time teaching job, while also scheduling gigs, 25 private students, speaking engagements, and all of my other personal events.
Fantastical is what I would call a prosumer application. It offers more power to someone looking for an advanced and well designed calendar, and it has a wide appeal (everyone needs a calendar!). Four dollars a month is steep, but manageable. Now that the price is reoccurring, I do think it will appeal to a smaller audience, as each user will have to reevaluate on a monthly or yearly basis whether or not this application is continuing to be worth the cost.
StaffPad is very different. It is a professional creation tool. Much like Photoshop is essential to designers and photographers, score editors are essential to the lives of most musicians, composers, and music educators. By charging 89 dollars, StaffPad follows a long history of apps in its field, which are often priced between 200 and 600 dollars.
I have to wonder… if the iPad had more software like this, and from an earlier point in time, would users have adjusted their expectations and would more expensive professional apps be more viable? And if so, would the viability of such professional apps lead to more (and better) professional apps on iOS?
And furthermore, would Apple adjust to these trends? Apple still offers no free trial for apps (something that will definitely deter a lot of my music teaching colleagues away from giving StaffPad a chance). Not to mention that professional creative software has a tradition of volume licensing and educator discounts. Educators who would normally be able to afford a program like this for themselves or their class are going to be stuck if they are looking for the same options with StaffPad.
App developers get around to this in number of ways, an example of which is to offer a free app where you have to buy it as an in-app purchase after a week. Of course there is also the subscription model. I am glad StaffPad went with a more traditional model than a subscription because it fits within the tradition of how its class of software is priced. And my hope is that this just might convince more developers to bring their own apps to iPadOS.
Which brings me to my second point…
StaffPad doesn’t, and probably wont, have a macOS app. It is built entirely around stylus input. This is why it could only exist on Windows Surface tablets at first. I am thrilled it is on iPad, but this presents an interesting question for users of Apple products.
A Windows Surface user notices no distinction between whether or not StaffPad operates on a touch-based OS or a traditional point-and-click OS, because they are one and the same. Even as macOS and iPadOS move closer and closer together, this distinction has lead them to be products with very different potentials.
On the other end, all the other players in the score-editor field (Sibelius, Finale, Dorico) remain “desktop” applications that run on traditional point-and-click operating systems. With the power of the current iPad Pro, there is no reason these applications couldn’t exist on iOS, other than that developing for iOS is very different. None of these developers have shown any signs of bringing their programs to iPadOS any time soon, and I would suspect StaffPad has no plans for a Mac version.
I admire how Apple has held their ground about the iPad being the iPad and the Mac being the Mac. It has made both platforms stronger. But as the iPad becomes a more viable machine for getting work done, Apple has got to get a plan for how to solve this essential “input” question.
A few years back, Apple released the OS X update Yosemite for Mac, drastically changing the way that the user interface appears. The first thing you may have noticed with this transition is that the icons for various different apps changed, becoming less glossy and three dimensional, and adding distinguished color gradient effects.
If you are anything like me, it may bother you that certain third party software developers have neglected to update their app icons. For me, Avid’s Sibelius is one of the only icons I keep on the dock that does not have this modern look. It sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s hideous, actually. So naturally, I changed it.
DeviantArt has a bunch of Yosemite themed icon remakes available. Click here to download a much improved Sibelius icon, depicted below. They also have icon replacements for Pro Tools, Avid Media Composer, and tons of other apps. Following the link also includes very clear instructions on how to properly make the icon change on your computer.
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