I've just reviewed most of the posts dealing with Finale '08, and --
following what appears to be a consensus around here -- have decided to
stick with '07 until notice of further improvements in known bugs.
I also took a look at some press statements on the MakeMusic site
announcing quarterly results. Two aspects of those statements are
striking: continued losses, and the importance of notation programs
(relative to other products) in the income stream of the company.
Clearly, this is a company that cannot take a publicity hit with its
prestige notation product.
From my own informal count on this list, at least twenty established,
long-term, professional users have indicated that they are not switching
to '08; most of them indicate that bug fixing is their main concern,
several of indicated a move to a competing product.
Perhaps it would be useful to document the number of such users more
precisely and use it as a form of leverage to encourage MakeMusic to
concentrate on improving the product's present functionality before
adding other features. I believe that most of us here would really
prefer to be loyal Finale users, but the benefits of Finale appear for
many of us to have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
Would it be possible now, from the list membership, to get a more
accurate sense of the number of us who are (a) a long-term, professional
users of Finale, (b) have serious concerns about bug fixes, and (c) iare
either skipping an '08 upgrade or switching to a competing product
during this cycle?
Daniel Wolf
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
