On 4/19/2018 2:20 PM, Craig Parmerlee wrote: [snip] > Every year that Finale does nothing, it gets another year behind the > state of the art. It seems doubtful to me Finale will ever return to > anywhere close to the state of the art. Moreover, I don't see any > indication the company even considers that a goal. [snip]
Finale is a mature program, as is Sibelius. That doesn't mean it's close to perfect, but it does mean that the company realizes that there is a diminishing return on investment, since what it improves will be meaningful (most of the time) to a decreasing number of users. And the marketplace for new users is very divided -- college students can get by very adequately with MuseScore, as can many amateur composers/arrangers who would have been the prime candidates for the cheaper versions of Finale in the past. And the marketplace currently is very divided, what with Sibelius still going strong, the entry of Dorico to compete for the high-end publishing quality notation software market, along with Notion and Forte to take up the not-so-high-end part of the marketplace. These days I recommend MuseScore to all my students who express an interest in notation software, since it is very powerful and continues to get better and better. Only if someone wants something better than MuseScore to I suggest Finale and/or Sibelius. Personally I have switched to doing practically all my notation products in Sibelius -- for my notational needs it does all that I need/want and it does it more easily and quickly. The company isn't moving Finale forward very fast because it can't recoup its investment. Whereas with SmartMusic, and its subscription-only business model, it sits on a cash cow. As far as the company is concerned, I'll bet they consider Finale necessary primarily as a tool for people to create SmartMusic accompaniment files and it can already do what it needs to for that without further investment in the minutiae of avant-garde notation and without improving long-standing bugs which will never get fixed. Heck, even if you create your own music and then create SmartMusic accompaniment files, you still have to pay the subscription fee! Smart marketing, but something I don't have any interest in doing. However, for band directors and other music teachers in academic situations, it's something that gives them objective data on which to assign grades to students, and it takes very little effort on the band director or music teacher's part. And once the assignments have been created the teacher no longer needs to schedule time to hear every student, and students can't complain "Mr. So-and-So doesn't like me so he gave me a D, when SuzyQ, who got an A, doesn't play any better than I do!" That's been the course of the company for the past several owners. I'm very sorry to read that Michael Johnson has left the company. Is there anybody from the "good old days" left? I assume Michael Goode is still there, but he is a recent addition. Is there any "institutional memory" left among the development team? -- ***** David H. Bailey dhbaile...@comcast.net http://www.davidbaileymusicstudio.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu