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Finale 2004 Available for Mac OS X

Posted by pudge on from the but-garageband-looks-so-cool dept.

sunrein writes "After years of Mac OS X being available, MakeMusic has finally announced production and a Jan. 16 ship date of Finale 2004 for Mac OS X. This announcement comes after a public relations fiasco earlier this fall when the release date was pushed back just days before it was due to ship in late October."

12 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Finale... finally! by scottblascocomposer · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It's about time, really. I've been using Sibelius for two years now, and mainly because it was the best notation software available for OS X. I've been watching this thing with Finale, and occasionally sending them emails asking about it, and now I'm pretty psyched to try the demo.

    What I'm really waiting for, though, is an option in both (or all) programs to save in some open file format. That would mean true victory for us music tech dorks, and longevity for our files.

    --
    To reign is to serve.
  2. No big loss... by whiteSanjuro · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Having used Finale in my high school, I can safely say that it is the worst software I have ever used to write music. That is to say, it has the worst interface and least functionality I have yet to encounter outside of silly Geocities-style shareware. Cubase/Logic seem much more practical and offer many more options at the same price point.

    1. Re:No big loss... by sirfunk · · Score: 4, Informative

      You seem to miss the point... Finale is music composition and notation. Logic and Cubase are terrible for that. Logic and Cubase are intended mostly for recording and midi syle "composition"... i guess the main difference is finale is used more to write scores, Cubase and Logic are used to actually produce the sounds.. it's hard to explain, use them more and you'll realize what they are for... or just read teh websites.

    2. Re:No big loss... by whiteSanjuro · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Have you used Cubase's score editor? Because it seems Hans Zimmer has...if it's good enough for him, it should be good enough for most of the rest of the world. And yes, I know the difference because I tried to score music with Finale, and I have written songs with Cubase. Just because the sequencer is the default interface doesn't mean there isn't more under the hood.

  3. Good Timing-NOT. by Spencerian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Finale is a music composition application, and, based on the article header and apologetic text throughout the vendor's page, it is an application late in coming.

    That lateness won't make it easy to compete with any market or mind-share taken by the availability of products such as Symbolic Composer 5 (which appears to be shareware), and Apple's SoundTrack. The introduction of the new iLife application GarageBand, while not a full-featured composition tool, certainly can't help Finale in competition.

    (Disclaimer: IANAMusician)

    --
    Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
    1. Re:Good Timing-NOT. by scottblascocomposer · · Score: 4, Informative
      Problem with the programs you named is that they are not designed for notation, but rather just sequencing (valuable, to be sure, but if you need notation features, you won't get good ones uf there are any at all). A lot of people will say Cubase, Performer, ProTools, etc., etc., but those programs are also all geared toward Sequencing and not notation. There are comparatively few true notation programs for OS X (or at all, really), and by far the two biggest are Finale and Sibelius.

      There are others, but at this point they really play no true part in the competition game. Now, when one of them is capable of creating scores as attractive, flexible, and (most important for 99% of users) easily (which means not CLI-based, sorry), the big guys will start paying attention. Combine that with a simlar or lower price-point, and you have recipe for success, because I have yet to meet a user of any notation program who didn't have some gripes about it, or who would be unwilling to look to other programs.

      --
      To reign is to serve.
    2. Re:Good Timing-NOT. by lindsayt · · Score: 4, Informative

      I speculate that you're not familiar with the classical composition community. I have probably a half dozen sequencing and recording programs, similar to the ones you mention, but as they are primarily *sequencing* and not notation programs, none of them allow the depth, quantity of options, ease, and beauty of notation that Finale provides. There are other notation programs aimed at very large, complex compositions, but none is even remotely as popular as Finale: Sibelius and Prelude come to mind, though I'm not sure Prelude is still being sold (I used it in the early 90s before getting finale).

      Most classical music composers started using finale in the early-to-mid 90s on their Macs because at the time that was really the only combination that gave a composer the ability easily to input notations from a (musical) keyboard and keep track of the up to forty separate parts that may appear in a complex symphony.

      Of course now there are other programs and other platforms that can handle this task (I actually have most recently used finale on windoze with my Clavinova for my notation, I hate to admit) but the classic Clavinova->Finale->MacOS combination is still the most popular and the most supported, both by the industry and by the user base.

      The user base was angry about the October debacle precisely because for many of them there is no other alternative, as most of them don't have or want a windoze machine and don't want to learn sibelius.

      I hope to buy an iMac and Finale 2004 some time soon for this very purpose.

      --
      I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
    3. Re:Good Timing-NOT. by divbyzero · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Err, music notation programs are pretty much the textbook example of why the presence of a GUI does not automatically make a tool user friendly. Designing an interface for music notation is an extremely difficult task, and there are both good and bad GUIs, good and bad CLIs. Finale's unintuitive, overly modal GUI is one of the main reasons why they've lost so much market share to the newer competitor Sibelius.

      --
      But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
      Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
  4. Notation vs. Sequencing by transient · · Score: 5, Informative

    It seems that a fair number of people aren't aware of the difference between music notation programs and sequencing software. Finale is for music notation, programs like Cubase and GarageBand are for sequencing. Think of music notation as word processing for sheet music. It's not for putting together tracks on your computer, it's for people like my dad (professor of film music and music theory) who want to compose, say, a four-part bassoon piece.

    --

    irb(main):001:0>
    1. Re:Notation vs. Sequencing by divbyzero · · Score: 3, Informative

      The reason why so many people get confused by this is that the vendors are constantly trying to blur the line between different classes of software. Try to name a current product in each of the following distinct categories that doesn't cross the line into at least one of the others:

      • music typesetter
      • linear MIDI sequencer
      • pattern-based MIDI sequencer
      • tracker
      • stereo sample recorder / editor
      • non-realtime multitrack sample compositor
      • realtime audio sequencer or DAW
      • sample loop sequencer
      • software synthesizer

      Convergence in not inherently good nor bad, but it helps to know what are the core strengths of any given program and what has been bolted on to the side.

      --
      But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
      Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
  5. Bloatware? by am46n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is no escaping the fact that Finale, though rock solid, has always been, and will continue to be, bloatware and a lesson in bad interface design. Anybody serious about using notation software has switched, or should switch, to Sibelius.

    Finale suffered from:
    -slow redraws (Sibelius was originally lightning fast on the Acorn)
    -crap redraws (display artifacts left behind when dragging. None of this in Sibelius)
    -legacy nested dialogs that had to fit on the screen of an SE
    -crap auto-layout and spacing (Sibelius does this seamlessly in the background without having to be told to do it)
    -music takes ages to notate
    -no FlexiTime
    -no automatic placing of dynamics etc (hard to get continuity of spacing)
    -generally frustrating and confusing to use

    That's why I stopped buying the updates with Finale 2002. However, if they have seriously addressed these issues and offered a complete rewrite, rather than just a further-bloating of the legacy codebase, I might reconsider my judgement. Past experience says not to hold your breath though.

  6. Post-Macworld? by koehn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why, oh why, would you wait until the week AFTER MWSF to announce this? Hopefully somebody got shot for getting the CD masters out two weeks too late.

    Was anybody at MWSF who got to see these guys? What were they saying?