I'm trying to call MakeMusic to a higher standard and am discussing it with the list to hear a variety of viewpoints. First off, this list is mild in comparison to the complaints on the official Finale forum. That forum has the feature of being able to take polls and show the results graphically. Of those that took a recent poll, most people find Finale 2004 to be too slow or worse. So given that bit of data, unscientific as it is, I don't think that I'm just part of a vocal minority. Secondly, we are not doing any favors to ourselves or to MakeMusic if we give the impression that all is well when we feel strongly otherwise. I don't think that MakeMusic is complacent, but I certainly don't want to give them the impression that they've satisfied their loyal and long-term customers with FinMac 2004.
I have a fast computer and I find Finale to be too slow in comparison to the previous version. I also have used Finale since version 1.0 and have done great things with it over time. I spend about 8 to 14 hours a day in the Finale environment and so I want things to improve, not get worse. Because I live in Finale, I take personally the extra time it takes to do things. (I estimate that I have to add one to two EXTRA hours a day with Finale 2004.)
There was a time when splitting and editing the parts of a 15 minute orchestral score, for example, could take weeks. Now it can be done in days. Upgrades and bug fixes have been essential for those improvements.
Does anyone remember version 3.0? I almost lost my job over that disaster because I couldn't print out what I had on the screen, but in the nick of time, a bug fix came through. In general we have been able to count on those free updates to solve the most egregious errors. That is why I think we deserve another free upgrade to improve general performance. The bugs I can get around. The pokiness is another thing.
Of course I'll pay for version 2005 because the promise of improvement is too important to ignore. If it doesn't deliver the performance I'll still be using 2003, but I still will exercise my right to call for something better.
-Randolph Peters
**************************************************** Hal wrote:
My point in commenting on this topic is I am finding MacFin2004 a productive tool in spite of the bugs described by the most frustrated complainers. I use it every day for a variety of scores - solo songs, choral music, chamber music, band and orchestral scores with up to 30 staves. I use staff sets for large scores. I know how to enter lyrics without encountering problems. I know that it can be dangerous to do a lot of work on multiple files open at once. I'm just a little annoyed by having to wade through pages and pages of complaints. IMHO, I don't think I'm in the minority here. People tend to sound off more often when they are frustrated than when they are generally satisfied. We are doing Sibelius and other scoring applications a great service by filling our list with so much negative verbiage.
However, I do appreciate those of you who take the time to report bugs to us - once or twice even - and who take the initiative to report them to Coda, which I have done myself as a service to the company - since I started using Finale with Version 1.0.
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