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| MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > Finale - Macintosh - FORUM HAS MOVED! > The Sib - Fin war | Forum Quick Jump
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Konstantin Neergaard
Registered Member
      
Date Joined Oct 2000
Total Posts : 37
| Posted 6/21/2002 5:27 AM (GMT -6) |   |
It IS possible to read the forum at the
others! There is a whole thread there
dealing with the fact that Finale seems to
have lost ground, because of the slow
progress towards an OSX-version.
Another question is off course whether
that's the most important battleground.
(The development of the OSX-versions, I
mean.)
More important, IMHO, is the fact that
Sibelius has won the over-all design-war.
It looks much cooler! And what's worse: It
looks if Finale is always a step behind,
not only designing new features, but also
in making the interface look more
up-to-date.
Hopefully, and I'm not familiar enough
with the Sibelius software to know, Finale
will stay in front when it comes to basic
functionality, and not only smartness and
flashy looks.
But I have an increasing doubt about
where to put my bets in the ongoing war...
/JKN
JKN
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cliffdzihner
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 486
| Posted 6/21/2002 7:03 AM (GMT -6) | |
In the "Switch to Sibelius? Really?" thread a nice person named Anon69 let me know that you can read their forums by going to the main Help Center page and then clicking on Guest Access on the lower left.
If you go to the Chat Page you won't find it. I wonder if that's a design flaw or a "feature" on the part of their web master!
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guser
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2001
Total Posts : 661
| Posted 6/21/2002 7:52 AM (GMT -6) | |
It looks to me like Finale is losing. Ease of use is very important in attracting and keeping new users. And Sibelius is winning that battle hands down, in my opinion.
I know some 'old hands' here will disagree, but all I can say is they must never have led a beginner through the process of learning Finale, which most find agonizingly frustrating.
Also, I believe Coda has made a fundamental error in marketing strategy. To make the program more attractive to new users, they have chosen to pile on more and more frivolous and distracting 'features' like MidiScan, MicNotator, Exercise Wizard, Rhyming Dictionary, etc., instead of concentrating on making the program more intuitive and getting rid of bugs. As a result, they may pick up some unsuspecting buyers, but many of them will quickly become disillusioned.
"This is simply the worst single piece of software of any kind that I have ever encountered" is a phrase I have heard more times than I care to admit. And of course, these bitter and angry would-be users aren't shy about sharing their feelings with their friends and colleagues.
Too bad, really, because the program can really do a lot once you know how to work around all its deficiencies.
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jcotton
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2000
Total Posts : 453
| Posted 6/21/2002 8:12 AM (GMT -6) | |
>I know some 'old hands' here
>will disagree, but all I can
>say is they must never have
>led a beginner through the
>process of learning Finale,
>which most find agonizingly
>frustrating.
huh?? Do you think the "old hands" were born knowing how to use this program? We were all beginners at some point, you know.
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cliffdzihner
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 486
| Posted 6/21/2002 8:57 AM (GMT -6) | |
>once you know how to work around all its deficiencies.
I've been checking out Sibelius's forum for the first time. They have some very funny problems of their own. Check out the post asking how to change a staff name!
I'm sure it's very powerful once you figure out how to add a new instrument and hide the old name! Of course, I could be mistaken about this.
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migman
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2000
Total Posts : 2432
| Posted 6/21/2002 9:42 AM (GMT -6) | |
Why would anyone want to learn piano,
when they could play a Casio with
one-finger chords and cheesy bass
lines?
Both Finale and Sibelius make choices
for you based on default settings, but I
believe that Finale gives you more
flexibility over those choices. Less
choices means less to choose, which
means an easier program (if you can't
change something, you don't have to
worry about learning how to do it).
My observations are based on Sibelius
1.4, so they may have fixed it up in 2.x.
The ease/power trade-off can be
illustrated with the example of the
self-tuning guitar. Imagine how easy it
would be if you never had to tune a guitar.
You would never have to learn any open
or altered tunings. You wouldn't be able to
tune to a recording, but think of the time
you could save tuning all the time, not to
mention the fact that tuning a guitar is a
skill that you would have to learn.
We're probably all musicians here, and
we have all had to learn instruments that
are harder to learn than the Casio. I don't
think that Finale is needlessly
complicated, but I do think it is more
flexible and powerful than Sibelius.
2¢ deposited.
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Sebastian Huydts
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 178
| Posted 6/22/2002 12:59 AM (GMT -6) | |
Absolutely - the absence of consistency and bug fixing is more than annoying. Finale's quite ugly interface is being worked on I assume, although I don't give a damn about fancy palettes or yet another stupid MIDI implementation or other gadget to compose automatically. I DO want my virtual staff paper to have a more eye-friendly color, I DO want to be able to place tuplets ALWAYS above the staff, spaced more or less automatically, I DO want to be able to select all articulations like you can with expressions. Just some features that many of us have been requesting for years. Maybe our nagging will pay of one day.
Yet, I can work efficiently and fast. Yes, the learning curve was steep, but I don't believe Sibelius is any different when it comes to doing really complicated stuff. Bottom line: As long as Sibelius cannot adequately import Finale files (my attempts always lead to fatal errors) and as long as they keep their unfriendliest of unfriendly protection schemes, not a single hair on my head (I am not bald) will think of switching.
Cheers to all,
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guser
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2001
Total Posts : 661
| Posted 6/22/2002 4:51 AM (GMT -6) | |
I don't plan to change -- yet -- either, because (a) I don't want to spend the money, and (b) I've already invested too many years in learning Finale. But that's not exactly the same as a ringing endorsement of Finale.
My concern is that from the standpoint of the professional engraver, Finale is essentially standing still, while Sibelius is forging ahead steadily. Even the most diehard Finale loyalists -- perhaps especially the most diehard Finale loyalists -- should find that trend alarming.
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kignature
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2000
Total Posts : 337
| Posted 6/22/2002 11:49 AM (GMT -6) | |
I hardly find the improved doc opts and program opts standing still. Nor the improved tablature.
I'm lukewarm on the plug-ins, but those aren't coming from coda. I think they're trying to spend their time getting ready for OSX. I'd rather have them do it right than push it out the door just to keep up with an inferior product.
I don't like Sibelius' interface. I don't know what the hell I'm clicking on 80% of the time.
another 2 cents deposited.
AnonX
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BMillwood
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2000
Total Posts : 35
| Posted 7/2/2002 6:36 AM (GMT -6) | |
On 6/21/2002 12:52:00 PM, Anonymous
wrote:
>It looks to me like Finale is
>losing. Ease of use is very
>important in attracting and
>keeping new users. And
>Sibelius is winning that
>battle hands down, in my
>opinion.
>
>I know some 'old hands' here
>will disagree, but all I can
>say is they must never have
>led a beginner through the
>process of learning Finale,
>which most find agonizingly
>frustrating.
I couldn't disagree more. I led three high
school classes of music students
through an introduction to Finale, with the
assignment being to notate their own
compositions. Most of the students were
finished in two one-hour sessions. And
most of them did it without the help of a
manual, and with only minimal input from
me.
Finale gets a *bad* rap for being user
unfriendly. Really, I've never known what
the fuss is about.
-Bill
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cliffdzihner
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 486
| Posted 7/2/2002 6:42 AM (GMT -6) | |
>Finale gets a *bad* rap for
>being user
>unfriendly. Really, I've never
>known what
>the fuss is about.
I'm with Bill on this one. After years of working with Finale I was surprised to find that Finale was considered user unfriendly. Sure, it can be difficult when you're doing difficult things, but what does one expect?
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Richard Rasch
Registered Member
Date Joined Sep 1999
Total Posts : 50
| Posted 6/17/2003 7:36 PM (GMT -6) | |
I said it before, years ago when the Finale
discussions were raging on AOL about the time it
took to really learn Finale.
You have spent a significant number of years
learning to read and understand music notation,
but now you want a software program to do it all
for you in only a few hours.
Is there really a difference between a composition
by Yanni and one by Bach???
-Richard Rasch
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Richard N.
Musician
Date Joined May 2001
Total Posts : 1424
| Posted 6/17/2003 9:57 PM (GMT -6) | |
IMHO,
Coda want Finale to have a broader appeal to musicians - they say that there are not enough pure engravers around to make it viable just to target them.
The [non high-end] Finale knockers want a program that they can use straight out of the box without having to read a manual.
It appears that Coda address this by reviewing the program interface, bundling plug-ins, and making certain tools easier to use - non of which are inherently incorrect things to do.
I am sure that a great majority of the criticisms of steep/long learning curves, and non-intuitiveness, etc., etc., could be more easily addressed by Finale being shipped with:
1. Default settings that achieve at least 'acceptable' results without tweaking [line thicknesses, chord suffixes, etc., etc.,]
2. Better quality/more complete templates and libraries that enable new users to produce Lead Sheets, SATB scores, et al, without having to exercise their grey matter to any great extent.
Look at the number of people who criticise Finale for the apparent difficulty of adding chords to a lead sheet. Why not set up the lead sheet template with eighth note rests already in layer 4 so that chords can be attached anywhere in any measure - it's how a lot of seasoned Finale users do it?
I believe that there a any number of tweaks such as this that could be done to the existing program that when added together would effect a leap forward in the perceived user-friendliness of the program.
And this would leave the hardcore software guys dealing with the high-end engraving shortfalls of Finale instead of trying to turn Finale into "Composer-in-a-Box©,®"
Richard N.
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