Re: [Finale] Finale 2005 development cycle?

[Darcy James Argue]

This is all far too late to have any impact on Fin2005, but I agree 
that Finale ought to seriously consider abandoning the yearly paid 
upgrades to allow for more rigorous testing and greater long-term 
thinking.  Their bottom line may not allow it right now -- it would 
almost certainly be a short term loss if they went to upgrades every 
other year, or upgrades "when it's ready" as Sibelius does -- but it 
would also be an opportunity for Coda to seriously focus on their 
market share, winning back users who have migrated to Sibelius -- or at 
least stemming the tide in a substantial way.  Their current strategy 
for this seems to consist entirely of "feature-itis" -- so they can go 
to a potential Sibelius buyer and say, "Oh yeah, but does Sibelius have 
*this* feature, or *this* feature," etc. -- even when those features 
are badly implemented or mere novelties.  All this at the expense of a 
badly-needed fundamental overhaul of the graphics engine, UI, and core. 
 It also comes at the expense of fixing longstanding bugs.  Human 
Playback and all that is fine, but this is a *music notation* app and 
at some point Finale is going to have to address the significant -- and 
growing -- performance gap between Fin and Sib, especially in the Mac 
version.

Experienced users know that the even-numbered Finale upgrades are the 
ones with the most substantial and important new features -- this was 
true of Fin2000, Fin2002, and Fin2004.  The off-year upgrades -- 
Fin2001, Fin2003 -- tend to contain a few minor tweaks and refinements, 
assorted "special interest" stuff, but primarily feature-its and bloat, 
stuff that looks good to newbies on a brochure but doesn't actually 
work.  It seems like Coda doesn't have the resources to really make it 
worthwhile to put out an upgrade every year.  If they went to every two 
years, but charge more, that would be a start.

Fin2004 was a very ambitious release, but Coda obviously bit off far 
more than it could chew, especially since they were simultaneously 
trying to add all the new features in 2004 plus OS X support, and a 
(apparently very half-assed) attempt to keep the OS 9 version alive.  
Fin2005 will necessarily be a bit of a bugfix release.  Obviously its 
frustrating that Coda isn't planning on fixing Fin2004, but at this 
point we're talking good money/time/resources after bad.  It sucks for 
us, but I understand why Coda feel they have to focus on moving 
forward.  The important thing is that the stuff that needs fixing gets 
fixed -- if we have to pay for an upgrade to do it, well, I think of it 
as a charitable donation to the "Keep Coda from going under" fund.  Of 
course, you have to hope that they have a tangible and realistic 
strategy for not going under, but that's another story.

- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brooklyn, NY
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale