David Hage wrote:
In my humble opinion it must be that 90% of Sibelius users never used a music notation program before
Unfortunately, simplicity sells.
Well of COURSE simplicity sells. Simplicity is also the hallmark of a mature technology. Simplicity means that anyone can pick it up and use it without worrying about how it works. (Not my original idea, by the way. The subject of an excellent editorial by Stan Schmidt in Analog a while back.) For a crude example, land-line telephony is a mature technology. Anyone can use it. You don't need expensive training. It works when your power goes out. Cell-phone technology is far from being mature, in part because the infrastructure does not yet exist. Cells can lose signal and leave the user frustrated and helpless.
The first music programs were designed by engineers, not musicians. Essentially they invented their own graphic engineering notation that made wonderful sense to them, and got away from all that grody old stuff that was developed for monks with feathers. (That's still what you find in some sequencing programs.) Only problem was that real musicians had no intention of dropping the notation that served them so well and has become the international standard of musical communication, feathers or not.
The power users on this mailing list--and I have enormous respect for them and their knowledge and skills--scoff at the idea of using Finale, or any program, right out of the box, but I submit that the expectation of using something right out of the box is a legitimate expectation and, again, the mark of a mature technology. I expect to plug in a new refrigerator or range and start using it. I don't expect to have to reprogram it because the default settings selected by the engineers who designed it aren't what they should be. Obviously music notation technology is not yet mature.
There's also the phychological and physiological aspect of any technology. The amount of basic research done by Bell Labs by people like von Bekesy (sp?) is absolutely incredible, and that research is one reason land-line telephony is a mature techology. In computer programs we're talking about the user interface. It doesn't matter what's happening under the hood. What matters is how easily and how quickly and efficiently the user can DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. My father-in-law was a master salesman working for Humble Oil. He told his bosses, "Keep the engineers away from my customers. All they talk about is what the product can do. I need to talk about what the product will do FOR MY CUSTOMER!"
Modern heads-up displays are hardly a simple technology, but they are the result of an incredible amount of basic and applied research into human psychology and perception since WW II. They are simple to use, by someone who has been properly trained, and when there's a missile on your tail, that's all that counts! But with the requirement for highly specialized training, they are hardly mature, and their use is hardly simple. It will probably be the auto makers who turn them into a mature technology that anyone can use right out of the box, not the defense contractors.
And if people are weaned on Sibelius (for example at school), they're first choice when they buy their own software will be Sibelius.
That's a real obvious marketing truth, and it's one reason Apple has remained viable in a world awash in Windows. Product placement is effective. It works. Applies to pianos, athletic shoes, beer, and virtually anything else. (As an aside, our music department switched from Finale to Sibelius as the required notation program for the simple reason that the new Freshman class was coming in, we required them to have Macintosh computers, those computers came with OS X, and Finale was too inept to have developed an OS X version (and from what I read here, still haven't figured it out!). We literally had no choice! Deadlines are deadlines. Sibelius: good marketing; Finale: horrible marketing!
And many people don't identify the limitations of the software, but rather they work within it (several times I've heard "I wanted to do XYZ but Sibelius wouldn't let me" from university-level composers).
Isn't it just a little disingenuous to talk about not identifying the limitations of the software, when the annual rants about Finale's bugs and failure to fix them and what the new program won't do and what needs to be made up for by third-party programmers and so on is in full hue and cry? I find it interesting that Composer's Mosaic does many things quickly and easily that Finale users are still struggling with, even though Mosaic's list of things it can NOT do is plenty long. The fact is that Finale can NOT do everything, and maybe that's true of any software. So the fact that Sibelius or other programs can not do everything either may be true, but is almost irrelevant. At this point in history you have to pick your deficiencies and live with them. But the fact is that for a huge base of those who use music notation programs, the basics are all you need, and anything beyond the basics is awfully nice to have AS LONG AS IT DOESN'T COMPLICATE THE PROGRAM AND MAKE IT HARDER TO USE! Lots of church musicians and others get a lot of functionality out of Noteworthy Composer, limitations or not, and the price is right.
Finale needs to have *extra* attractiveness than Sibelius for first-time users, when at the minute it's well behind. Despite it's greater capabilities (I've picked up engraving jobs which were turned down by Sibelius users as 'not possible').
And that's a great short statement of the present problem. MM appears to be doing exactly that with the fluff for casual users, as a number of people have pointed out. Which suggests that the power users on this list are NOT their marketing base--or that their marketing department has decided this is true, whether it is or not.
John
-- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
