On 10 Jul 2005, at 13:53, dhbailey wrote:
Why not let the Finale developers spend a bit more time on each
upgrade (as it was in the older days) and give us a more substantial
upgrade?
They could charge a bit more (like Sibelius does) for each of their
non-regular upgrades, to provide essentially the same income flow,
just spaced out differently and providing upgrades which are more
appealing to a larger number of Finale users.
That sounds like an excellent idea. For each upgrade the developers
have to take large portions of the program apart and put them back
together again, having integrated the new features. I think a lot of
the development time is spent just making the old features work again.
For a small development team working on a program as complicated as
Finale, an update a year is just not efficient. Put very roughly: with
a yearly cycle, the developers might be spending about 6 months on the
"taking apart" and "putting back together" phases and 6 months on
developing the new features. With a two year-cycle, they might still be
spending about 6 months on the "taking apart" and "putting back
together" phases but they'd have 18 months for developing the new
features.
There's another thing to consider: many users prefer not to purchase
the upgrade every year anyway: they will wait another year or two until
the latest version really seems to represent a substantial improvement
on the one they're using.
My bet is that MakeMusic would gain in the long run by not releasing a
"Finale 2007" next year and bringing out a real "must-have" update a
year or so later.
Michael Cook
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