Randolph Peters wrote:
I just paid a visit to the Yahoo/Sibelius list for the first time and I
discovered that lo and behold, many of this list's contributors are also
writing over there. It felt like I had discovered some clandestine dirty
little secret.
My impression is that the discussion is a little more upbeat than the
Finale discussion at this time. When someone has a problem with the
product, they are encouraged to talk to the company to solve it. It was
like they had good experiences with that!
And having a company rep answer questions on the list was another bonus.
(As it is when people connected to Finale contribute here as well.)
I'm not advocating a switch, but I'm just saying...
Yes, Daniel Spreadbury's presence on that list has been one of the
greatest PR moves that any company could have made.
Many Finale users have long requested such a presence on the Finale list
but to no avail.
Daniel freely admits his program's shortcomings, points to specific
people within the Sibelius corporation to approach on specific problems,
talks about what is being worked on for future upgrades, sometimes
saying that he has no idea when it actually might be include, but at
other times giving hints to the effect of "you'll be pleasantly
surprised by the next upgrade" and currently being more specific about
what will be included in the soon-to-be-forthcoming update patch.
All in a pleasant tone of voice, fielding complaints as well as
compliments, not resorting to "we can't replicate that here" unless it's
true, when he ALWAYS requests that the complainer send an attachment to
demonstrate the problem.
And he knows the program inside and out, compared to some of the tech
support personnel at Finale who I think must have been hired a week
before I contact them and who have never actually used the program but
have been handed a notebook with "first response answers" they're
supposed to give us to test our perseverance. Only if we pursue the
problem beyond that first response do we get close to a real solution,
which is quite often, "I'll add this to our list of bug-fix requests"
with no sense of sympathy or concern that we might not be happy with the
problem or the program.
The Sibelius group is a very upbeat group, but then long-standing bugs
in the program don't seem to exist -- they're addressed when they're
discovered, if not in an interim update at least with the next version.
And one of the biggest selling points of all with Sibelius, in my
opinion, is that the last two versions have included the ability to save
a file in the format of an earlier version, making backwards
compatibility possibility without jumping through hoops. So somehow
they have stabilized their data format to allow such an action, which
would be wonderful if Finale could match.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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