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The End of Finale

finalemusic.com

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Re: The End of Finale

#81

Post by dahart »

skywhopper wrote: post #76
dahart wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license to use existing installs is not being revoked, customers can continue to use Finale on their computer. How do you know they’re not offering compensation to people who purchased recently? What compensation do you expect, and under what circumstances? (* edit to add link to the refund offer: https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308... ) Like I said, I’m comparing the extra year to situat…

Yes, people are pointing out that “it could be worse” is a cruddy thing to say. It’s bad! It could always be worse, but there’s no point in saying so. Continuing to harp on “it could be worse” is not helpful. It sounds like you are disagreeing that it’s wrong and bad to disable future use of a product that is locally installed and not a subscription.

Thank you for acknowledging that my comment is being misinterpreted and that it could be worse. Of course it’s bad, the product died. That sucks for people who like Finale, sucks for people who paid for it recently, and it sucks for MakeMusic too! That simply does not justify attacking or disparaging the developer, nor making assumptions about their motivation, nor making unreasonable demands about how they handle the transition.

What do you actually want? Do you need to convert your Finale library? By nearly all accounts, Dorico’s a massive UX upgrade and being offered at a 75% discount. I haven’t used it, but I just don’t understand why the pitchforks are out, especially when I’m not hearing many personal stories in this thread, so that makes it seem like bystander outrage where the bystanders aren’t invested.

Re: The End of Finale

#82

Post by dahart »

prvc wrote: post #74
dahart wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s correct. The time is now to convert your Finale files, not a year from now. You could easily get stuck before a year is up due to OS upgrades. And you will get stuck eventually for the exact same reason, OS incompatibilities are coming, guaranteed. Finale is officially dead. Right now while it’s still working is when people should archive the contents of their files. Circling back to your top comment, my…

It is unreasonable for the software vendor to impose the task of converting a large mass of files (one by one!) on the users, especially within such a limited time frame. Most users have hundreds, thousands, or more such files to go through. As things stand, a very large amount of music is certain to become lost. A freeware convertor would obviate this particular concern. Very easy to implement, too; just don't disab…

Are you sure Finale has no batch export? There are free & paid tools available on both Mac & Windows to help automate menu actions and batch convert things.

The product is dead, and like any product or business that dies, yes users may have a problem with their archive. It does suck, and I feel for anyone in this situation. I guess the lesson is that this is always the risk with all software, it might lose support. It happens, often.

I don’t see any reasonable alternatives. It doesn’t seem reasonable to demand that someone ending support for a product must turn around and write a new product to continue supporting the dead product. If they’re out of money, they’re out of money, and they can’t afford to retain developers to work on it.

Re: The End of Finale

#83

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

bcatanzaro wrote: post #7

I may be the only person who loves LilyPond but I really do love it. The LaTeX of music notation.

Lilypond is for music typesetting (they call it "engraving").

Finale, Sibelius, Dorico, MuseScore are primarily for composing (though they have each made their own strides on the engraving front too).

Re: The End of Finale

#85

Post by amiga386 »

skybrian wrote: post #71

Meanwhile, I’m pretty happy with Musescore to make accordion sheet music for myself. Is Dorico worthwhile for amateurs?

If you've learnt how to use Musescore, and you have no external reason to learn Dorico or Sibelius, e.g. you need to collaborate with others already using them, then you're good. Editing is fast enough, people reading your music won't notice a difference once it's printed out.

The only thing I can think of is playback with VSTs and other fancy tools (e.g. Philharmonik, NotePerformer) - the fanciest ones are tied to Dorico/Sibelius/Finale. MuseScore now has its own such playback system, Muse Sounds, but each person will have their own preference.

Re: The End of Finale

#86

Post by domador »

dahart wrote: post #80
skywhopper wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re making it impossible to continue to use a product their customers already paid for. How is that not stealing?

Are you a Finale user? I guess you can call it stealing if you want. The word steal has many figurative meanings, such as ‘you stole my heart’. When a product fails, yes it eventually becomes impossible to use, even when you paid for it. To me it seems like misleading and hyperbole to call it stealing because you’re implicitly assigning malice to the business that simply failed, because they failed and aren’t getting…

It's stealing.

It's one thing if I buy a tool and it breaks down naturally. That does happen... in the physical world. It should NEVER happen in the software world, not for a standalone tool. If a company that sold you the tool (which you expected to use indefinitely) then goes out of their way to make sure you can't keep using that tool, then yeah, that's stealing.

Actually, it's not stealing. It's sabotage.

(And yes, they are making it nearly impossible to keep using finale. Unlike software, computers do break down. Or sometimes Microsoft forces everyone to get a new computer, as it seems will happen next year with the forced obsolescence of Windows 10 and forced move to Windows 11.)

Re: The End of Finale

#87

Post by ssttoo »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #16
minebreaker wrote: post #15

For me there are so many basic features that are missing in the competitors. I tried Dorico but it can't even play trills properly.

If you're notating classical music and want to be able to listen to half decent playback, I would suggest buying NotePerformer and working with MuseScore before buying one of the "fancy" notation packages. Dorico's default playback is worse than Finale's Aria player.

Agreed that NotePerformer is night and day difference, highly recommended. I don’t think it works with MuseScore though

Re: The End of Finale

#88

Post by gspencley »

dahart wrote: post #57
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just announced that they're stealing back the product they sold to their erstwhile customers. "It could be way worse" is a hell of a response to that. "We just stopped support for your Silverado. You can drive it for one more year, then we're coming to take it out of your garage. We have a deal with Ford for you to get an F-150 with a discount." "It could be way worse, at least I get to use it for another year,…

What’s with the outrage? Do you own a Finale license? I’m sorry if you do, this does suck for people who still want to use Finale, but “stealing back” seems like hyperbole. The product (along with their income stream related to it) is shutting down permanently. It died, and no amount of commentary is going to bring it back. Assuming you have a vested interest in the outcome here, what do you actually want to have hap…

I don't have a proverbial dog in this race but I agree with the outrage and I don't think "stealing back" is at all hyperbolic.

I guess if you're really really really young and all you know is subscription based software, then that is the world you know and you might just be accustomed to it and accept it.

But if Finale has been around for 35 years, then it existed long before "cloud" and long before subscription software was a thing.

If someone has invested money and time into using that software, into creating project files that only work with it, in learning how to use that then it is not remotely acceptable in my opinion to disable their access to something that they have paid for and invested in. I don't think that "stealing" is an inappropriate word to use in that case. Not even a little bit of hyperbole.

Does that mean that MakeMusic should continue to invest their own resources into maintaining it? Absolutely not. To answer your question: "what do you actually want to have happen to Finale that’s realistic for MakeMusic?": I would suggest that they allow people who have paid for it to continue to use it indefinitely.

This might mean that they need to release a patched version that's not going to activate remotely through their servers with a download link that will eventually expire.

I acknowledge that that doesn't cost them "absolutely nothing" but it's not a major expense (also happens to be a fixed cost) and it prevents them from being akin to your fridge manufacturer saying "we are discontinuing this model, as well as repair services for this model, therefore we are going to enter your house and physically remove your fridge one year from now so that you will be forever unable to use the thing that you paid us money for." What they get in return for this one time "end of life" service for their paying customers is customer retention and good will. I mean, I know that I will never consider buying anything from MakeMusic as a result of hearing that they might shut off my access to things I bought and paid for at any time.

Re: The End of Finale

#89

Post by Lammy »

dahart wrote: post #62
its-summertime wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could just not release the code they don't have the rights to, and release the code they do have rights to

What would that achieve? Why would anyone want a pile of old code that can never build or run?

Somebody would be able to replace the unreleased portions with new code.

Re: The End of Finale

#90

Post by dahart »

Clamchop wrote: post #70
dahart wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finale felt heavily loaded down with legacy garbage It seems like the letter fully confirms & validates your feeling. ;) There’s just no GUI software started 35 years ago that’s still alive and feels modern and unbloated. Okay, there might be something, but I want to see the examples that prove me wrong. Things that come to mind are like Photoshop or Word, both bloated with legacy and might be dying to web apps. Or…

I don't really like "bloated" as a descriptor, because it's so unspecific that it's hard to argue against. Does it mean the software is slow? Too cluttered and disorganized? Too feature-heavy? Compromised by backward compatibility? In any case, Photoshop, Word, and Windows are not in Finale's position clearly, as they're still far and away leading their respective markets. So, whatever bloat they may have, it's not y…

That’s fair, ‘bloated’ is very vague. And TBH I have multiple stories of devs complaining about bloat in order to justify a complete rewrite that turned out to be multi-million-dollar mistakes.

OTOH, I’ve been developing software long enough that you see the same pattern over and over. All application software is fresh and fast at first, and then gets bloated over time, where bloated means it accrues technical debt and accrues hard-to-manage code and accrues features that conflict with each other and slow down development.

Maya’s definitely bloated, and it has been for decades. Users were complaining about it being slow and buggy and a mess of a UI when I was using Maya in production more than 20 years ago. I went to the Maya developer’s conference around maybe 2002 and the devs were complaining about it being hard to maintain.

MacOS got a total ground-up rewrite in between versions 9 and 10, and it helps they built the UI on top of an existing nix. I hope Firefox and Blender last as long as Finale, only time will tell.

But it’s a good point that some bloated software hasn’t died, I have to assume that is because they’re making enough money from it to continue its development. I guess that would be true for Finale too, but that the income isn’t sufficient to carry it forward.

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