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
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