I doubt that MM/Finale will become a one platform product. There are
too many Windows users for them to drop that, and too many Mac people
in areas of activity that use Finale for MM to be viable if they
don't serve both markets equally. These people may or may not
respond to an individual's needs, but they are not stupid, and they
intend to be around for a while.
For reasons that I find hard to integrate into the history of a life
that has concentrated on the non-technical/electronic side of music
making, I have developed an ongoing friendly relationship with some
of the MM people, and with Gary Garritan and Tom Hopkins, who works
with him. I have no reason to expect that to change. Some of those
people will communicate with me personally, and I value that
connection. I don't think for a moment that I am privy to real
inside dope, or that I need to be, but MM people will occasionally
let me know how their thinking is going, and I have never had so much
as an inkling that Macs would be abandoned. Good to be prepared for
things, but there are more likely other problems that will occur to
us before that one ever does, not the least of which is the sea
change in how music is stored/distributed/shared and all the
attending issues connected with that. (The Sony discussion.)
On the subject of MM and their support response, I don't think I am
betraying any confidences in letting you know that they are
converting to a web based system rather than an email based one, and
that they intend this change to let them track details and history of
complaints w/case numbers etc. in order to improve support. They are
in the process of that conversion, and that may explain the somewhat
terse responses we (I) have gotten in the recent past. I have also
heard that attention in the 2007 version is weighing heavily in the
direction of the core use of the music prep side of the program -
good news for me, and some of the rest of us. It's probably a good
time to keep the feature requests going. I just asked again for the
incorporation of Patterson beams into Document Options. Maybe not so
many want this, but if it's an easy programming issue, it'd be nice
for some.
Just picked up Garritan JABB and am about to install it and begin
experimenting. I am far from as thorough a tester as some of you
(Darcy, Hiro and others who are more comfortable with computers), but
I may represent a kind of naive user, and that may help to provide a
good perspective on how it works for many like me.
More as I learn more.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Chuck
On Nov 23, 2005, at 12:59 PM, dhbailey wrote:
Johannes Gebauer wrote:
[snip]>
Personally I don't think Finale has much of a future if they
decide to go single-platform.
Johannes
Without intending to get into any sort of platform-wars or CPU-
wars, I wonder if that's true.
Knowing that Macs represent a very small share of the entire
computer industry, I would be very curious to know what size share
Macs have in the Finale marketplace.
I know that once Macs were the computers of choice for music, but I
also know that's not as cut-and-dried as it once was.
I know that as long as Sibelius remains two-platform, it will only
grow in market share should MakeMusic decide to go single-platform,
but I wonder how much of its current market-share MakeMusic would
actually lose should it decide to go single-platform.
Or worse, it might decide to keep 2006 as the working version for
the Mac platform, since most Mac users won't automatically be
buying new computers in January, when the intel chips are used,
while bringing out newer versions for Windows. Band-in-a-Box did
such a thing (leaving the Mac BIAB several versions behind and at a
slower upgrade rate) and still continues to thrive.
Does anybody know the percentage of Mac-to-Windows users of Finale?
Okay, I realize that MakeMusic knows that, but I don't think they
would release that information publicly. Does anybody on this
list know (and care to share) what the ratio is?
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Chuck Israels
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