finale 2006 woes



Let me preface this by stating that I was a beta tester for Finale 2006, which has just been released. I found some issues to have been nicely addressed by the programmers, while others may not have been. I didn't noticed any showstopper bugs or anything that severe, however.

However, there are several posts on the Finale-Mac discussion forums noting some very serious problems with the release version. These may be anecdotal, but and perhaps 99.999% of the users out there are not having any issues whatsoever. But these could be pretty serious issues:

* Perhaps the most serious bug: the installer apparently may erase the user-level OS X Application Support folder. This has been reported by some users, while others do not have such an issue. I can say that I never found any installer-related issues like this one during testing.
* Others have reported delays when using the Mass Select tool (which I also encountered in beta) and several other tools. This may counter some of the obvious speed increases in this version.
* The Garritan Personal Orchestra install disc takes forever (15 minutes or more) to install, and the install may fail on some systems. This was not something I had access to during the beta test.

Again, this is what I'm hearing on the forums, and doesn't represent a random or comprehensive population. However, the nature of some of these issues is pretty concerning, and I'm not rushing to install my soon-to-arrive copy for a bit. Just to be on the safe side...

ADDENDUM: I've received third-party information that shipments of Finale 2006 are on hold for now due to the problem with the installer overwriting the user-level Application Support folder, information about which only emerged today. Initial suspicions are that this is a 10.4-only problem, but that is not confirmed.

My take on all of this: the beta testing process appeared to be pretty thorough, but not everything could be addressed. The installer bug, however, is a QA issue and the installer that shipped was not what was tested. This is a huge error on one or more person's part. I'm glad, assuming it is true, that MakeMusic (Finale's manufacturer) had the wisdom to delay shipments at this point in order to address the installer bug. This has to be a major revenue issue for them. However, it's better to prevent problems in the first place, and something obviously fell short. My copy arrives tomorrow; I'm hoping MakeMusic will rectify this issue with those of us who are receiving ours too late for the company to do anything about the installer on the shipping CD.

Posted: Thu - July 28, 2005 at 02:23 PM          

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