On 21 Oct 2009 at 17:37, Christopher Smith wrote: > On Wed Oct 21, at WednesdayOct 21 4:59 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > In the real world, however, choices have to be made, and I'm certain > > nobody is happy about having to make these triage decisions. > > Hmm, more to the point, I think, is WHO is making these decisions? > When the programmers make them, we get things like TG Tools, the > Patterson suite, and Human Playback. When the marketing team makes > them, we get a little squirmy, because it seems like spending effort > for something WE don't use is wasted effort, and the new features > don't work well enough to be used.
It's the age-old conflict between the programmers and the marketers. If the latter weren't out there promoting the product, working with users and figuring out what people need/want and what is going to be most lucrative in the market as a whole, the programmers wouldn't have anything to do. On the other hand, without the programmers, the marketers wouldn't have anything to sell. My outside view of the situation (which is purely speculative) is that both parties are doing their best, but because of the management decision several years ago to start yearly updates (before about Finale 97 weren't the updates every couple of years or so?) they are now locked in a cycle that doesn't allow them the time to fix the accumulated problems. New or revised features have to be implemented in order to sell the program, and those only exacerbate the problems already present in the codebase. I don't know how you get out of this kind of death spiral, absent a sugar daddy to come in and finance a major project to fix the problems. And, of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this because I don't have any insider information about what's actually going on a MM. But it seems to me to be plausible and doesn't suggest that anybody is acting in bad faith, just that they are in a situation that makes it hard to satisfy all the competing demands on them. Of course, one can always blame management... -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
