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| MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > Finale - Macintosh - FORUM HAS MOVED! > Interesting (Disturbing) Times at MM? | Forum Quick Jump
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Fred G. Unn
Registered Member
      
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 1268
| Posted 11/21/2013 12:58 PM (GMT -6) |   | Wiggy said...
If you really think that management had no idea what Finale 2014 might contain until Justin presented the release build to them, at which point they fired him, then you are clearly just making things up.
Not at all! I'm sure they knew exactly what it would contain. What I'm completely speculating on is the internal timetable. A release every year must suck for the developers. By the time they release the "a" patch that was leaving them with only 6-8 months of development for the next release and it was getting later and later. Once they missed the back to school spending spree with 2012 (I had forgotten this) I think it probably made more financial sense to take their time, skip a year, do it right, and make sure they hit it with this version. Don't forget, a publisher had accidentally posted a release date of Mark Johnson's 2014 Trailblazer Guide as mid to late August 2013. (I think Justin or MM has since culled that post.) No sense publishing the book without the software so I bet early to mid August was the target release date. This would make financial sense as they would have hit the back to school spending spree and would have had a shiny new version when Sibelius didn't. (Will they ever again?) Missing that date after having an extra year of development was probably not good for the bottom line.
Or who knows? I'm just speculating. Maybe he threw up on the CEO's daughter at a Halloween party.
I really like Justin. He was a huge asset to the forum. I got to hang out with him a bit when Scott Yoho showed me around the MM mothership a few years ago when I was out there on tour. I certainly mean him no ill will and wish him the best in the future. (Steinberg?) But I bet missing that August deadline when there was no release the previous year was a financial burden on the company and someone's head had to roll. Again, just speculating, but it does seem to make sense.
For me personally, 2014 is a disappointment. I've bought every release since 2.3 and I have to for work compatibility, but there's not really a lot improved for me. Maybe there is for others. | | Back to Top | |
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rpmseattle
Registered Member
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 419
| Posted 11/21/2013 1:14 PM (GMT -6) | | Jari Williamsson said...
To me, the sad thing is that the management let a person like Justin go, while I am still faced with:
* Technical Support, where each new person I get in touch with there seems to consider my bug reports as a matter of me not knowing the basics of Finale.
For the record, this has been my experience, too.
Unfortunately, as an advanced user, I have frequently found myself in a position of teaching the tech support person something about Finale or having to repeat myself rephrased in great detail to file a bug report. A typical exchange is me explaining to Tech Support a list of reasons why what I am asking for is actually something separate from what Finale already does.
My initial report, typically with detailed steps is often replied to with a generic "read me" help article or a "here is how" response which misses what I was saying completely.
The tone is always very friendly and helpful, but obviously no one in the tech support chair is bothering to look up my serial number and personal info to note that I have owned and used every version of Finale since 1987 or whenever 2.0 came out, or that I list my occupation as "professional music engraver and copyist". At the very least, it would be encouraging to hear: "I'll need to check with my supervisor to get more information on this - it's not something I've ever come across before".
As a result, it requires more effort than it should to file a bug report or make a feature request, AND when professional users report bugs or poor design that negatively affects workflow*, these continue to go unaddressed, version after version.
This has led to a general apathy among professional users like myself who have largely given up on trying to affect change by reporting legitimate findings or even stating our opinions about what would increase productivity and clean up Finale's UI.
And so the net result of this historically poor communication is that many of us who make our living working in notation programs are now quietly getting more work done with your competitor's program(s).
Robert Puff
Finale 2012, 2011 | Mac Pro 8 Core Xeon | OSX 10.6.x
www.musicprep.com/makemusic
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/category/finale/Post Edited (rpmseattle) : 11/21/2013 12:31:30 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | |
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saxop
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2007
Total Posts : 261
| Posted 11/21/2013 1:19 PM (GMT -6) | | Ebony Ivory said...
Of course, everyone who "knew" better, told me, "No: MM is doing a major, root-and-branch rewrite of Finale, so this is why there is a break in the annual cycle".
And clearly they were right. Even non-programmers can look at the difference between the new features in Finale 2012 and Finale 2014 and see that this release had work that would have taken a lot more time.
Ebony Ivory said...
My most time-consuming bugs are still in 2014, and that disappoints me.
Weeks before the launch, when little leaks came out about 2014 that you managed to miss, those of us who saw them thought to ourselves that this release actually has some of the things Brian has been asking for all these years. But we also predicted you'd be saying this anyway. 
As for the speculation on why people were let go, it seems like we have a much more obvious explanation. New leadership came in, and with that there is typically a restructuring of existing leadership with some positions being removed altogether. That doesn't mean things are going worse than usual. It just means that when a company comes in saying they intend to make changes, we should expect to see changes, especially in leadership positions. Surely it would have been stunning if after acquiring MakeMusic they had just left everything as it was. They waited until the current dev cycle was finished so as not to mix things up and then implemented some planned changes.
Let's all just wish Justin the best of luck (as well as his colleagues) and pass around his name to anyone we know that might benefit from his excellent work. | | Back to Top | |
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Philip.
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2006
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 11/21/2013 1:37 PM (GMT -6) | | I was going to post something, but just having read Robert Puff's and saxop's latest remarks, I agree with both of them entirely.
Well, may I add one thing that is implicit in Robert's remarks. I felt Justin (and to be fair, Michael Good and Beth Varela in particular) have gone a long way in reversing some of those communication problems we all experienced during some of the darker years. Many of us were heartened by Justin's increased presence on the various forums and social media, and I always felt that there was a mutual acknowledgement of understanding the software, so I am sorry to see him go.
Finale 2008b, 2009b, 2010b, 2011c, 2012c
Sibelius 5.2.5, 6.2, 7.1.3
Logic Pro 9
Mac 10.6.8
2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
14 GB RAM
www.nycmusicservices.com/Post Edited (Philip.) : 11/21/2013 12:49:04 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | |
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Zuill
"The Troll"
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 29077
| Posted 11/21/2013 2:01 PM (GMT -6) | | I have been doing something I have not really done in the past. I am filing case after case, and updating daily, if possible, each incident. Also, I never call tech support for advice. In fact, I often get calls from colleagues who need help after they have called tech support without an answer. I usually get it working for them. Tech support read their answers from the manual, usually, and a reboot is not usually the answer for what I need.
Zuill
"When all is said and done, more is said than done."
Finale 2002b, 2003a, 2004b, 2005b, Win XP SP3, 2011b Win 7 64bit, 2012a Bought and Paid For (Hopefully soon 2012b with some of the MAJOR BUGS fixed--well, now with 2012b and some of the bugs are fixed) 2012c, with some bug fixes. 2014 now.
Favorite Forum quote: "Please, everybody, IGNORE THE TROLL!" Post Edited (Zuill) : 11/21/2013 1:04:48 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | |
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Fred G. Unn
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 1268
| Posted 11/21/2013 3:04 PM (GMT -6) | | Zuill said...
I have been doing something I have not really done in the past. I am filing case after case, and updating daily, if possible, each incident.
Just a question, is there any direct input into development by users other than filing a case? I haven't beta tested in years but back when I was doing it Scott Yoho and Randy Stokes seemed to take into consideration a lot of the suggestions of beta testers and they were often quickly implemented. Maybe they can't say, but do current beta testers have any pull in this regard? I guess what I'm asking is, is there any direct input into development by power users at all anymore? (Maybe Jari or Tobias?)
It would seem to be in MM's best interest to try to accommodate some of the wishes of power users or at least have a better system of addressing them. Many of us have been requesting the same things for 10 years or more. It seems like there was a long period where development was driven primarily by marketing, so MM could counter any of Sibelius' claims or features. In fact, this was when I was sort of turned off by beta testing. I would report bugs or deficiencies but they wouldn't get fixed because the time frame of the development cycle, which I partly interpreted as the feature just had to be there to counter Sibelius, it didn't actually have to work correctly. We all know how hard it is to get something changed once it's actually released. I'm not sure what the future holds for Sibelius development, but it would be nice to see MM now get back to addressing some concerns of power users rather than one upping Sibelius. "Finale 2015, now without collisions between accidentals in different layers" isn't a great slogan but it's a feature most of us here would upgrade for. | | Back to Top | |
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Ebony Ivory
On Ebony And Ivory I'll Tinkle All Day Long
Date Joined Dec 2005
Total Posts : 4594
| Posted 11/22/2013 4:55 AM (GMT -6) | | saxop said...
Weeks before the launch, when little leaks came out about 201
Indeed, and I have already publicly praised TWO of the long-term multi-layer bugs that I have been banging on about for years, finally getting fixed: correct (keyboard instrument) interpretation of accidentals between layers, and automatic coalescing of parallel rests. One will save me creating scores that play back correctly on the computer, but not in the hands of a live pianist (important), the other will save me combining those parallel rests by hand (useful, but never a big deal).
The KILLER one for me, though, is still there: rests in layer 2 colliding with notes in layer 1 (etc). It REALLY can't be a massive tweak to set the initial position of a rest in any one layer, a user-specified minimum distance above/below a clashing note in another layer? It's a one-dimensional shift, for heaven's sake. And THIS is the one that costs me a LOT of time when writing piano vocal scores.
And the fourth one, which is a BORE but not as bad as the previous, is that overlapping chords or notes in two layers don't automatically offset from one another - unless they contain clashing seconds or (optionally) unisons.
This last one is a double problem, because in order to fix all those clashing rests (the KILLER), with risking getting rests out of alignment horizontally, I have to turn off user spacing adjustments - so can't manually offset the chords. Sure, I can, after all my rests are perfect, by turning on the user spacing adjustments, and going through the score one more time, trying not to nudge the wrong things.
But SURELY, 14 years after I first raised these points to Coda (remember them?), I am disappointed that we're only half way there.
Justin asked me for an illustration of the problems, which I duly sent him. "I'm on the case", he PM'd me, moments before vanishing off the face of this earth.
Brian
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TwoFuSoYa2
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2013
Total Posts : 24
| Posted 11/25/2013 6:36 AM (GMT -6) | | This is an interesting thread. At first I was pretty upset to first hear about this on the Sib blog; I thought "why in the world would there not be an announcement about this sort of thing?!" Then I thought about it and realized that, sadly, this sort of change happens to companies all the time. I agree that Justin was kind of our own Daniel Spreadbury in a lot of ways, and I like knowing that there's a person deeply entrenched in the company who can listen to us old nuts and try to help. I'd never been helped by Justin myself, but there were so many posts (not only to this forum, but boy you guys should try reading the absolute craziness on MM's Facebook page!) in which Justin would personally reach out and provide quick and helpful tech support, without being condescending or deflective. That is so huge to me as a customer, and I hope that through Erin or Beth we'll keep seeing this in the future :)
I don't think any of us really know why the changes were made - It sounds like there were quite a few more changes than just Justin, so maybe it was something bigger and he got washed up in it. Not a great idea if you ask me, but a lot of companies do this sort of thing regularly, for reasons passing understanding. And it doesn't even take a possibly failed launch to make it happen, either. There are so many examples of new management coming in and restructuring or reorganizing a shakeup of some kind in a company, and I completely wouldn't be surprised if it was simply a new strategy to make the product better. Maybe letting people go opened up new positions for developers, or made the company more efficient - I have no idea, but I've also never been in upper management, so I guess I'm speculating too.
As far as their tech support goes, I've used Finale for a long time and definitely had to call more times than I'm willing to admit. And despite whatever problems, I've had pretty good luck with them TBH. I think there was definitely a change a few years ago where they must have had additional training or something, because I absolutely remember writing in to them, and while they always helped me, it seemed like I was getting a canned or careless response more than I'd like. But that was at least 5 years ago; nowadays, it seems like there's been a huge improvement to me! I swear I noticed that their answers became longer and more informative. And frankly, even if they weren't, I dare anyone to name better (free) tech support from a company as large as Finale. I can't tell you how many times I have to call my cable company and get transferred 20 times (if I even get to speak to a person) to make simple changes that I would prefer to do online anyway! I've never waited on hold for more than 5 minutes, and maybe it was just luck, but I've never felt like MM wasn't trying to help me. I really hated it when they stopped answering how-to questions on the phones, but it isn't that hard to send in a case with them and I guess I can understand why they had to do it... Although, it is funny that we still see a sticky about it on the forum a year later!
I still believe in MM, and my copy of 2014 is working fine, although I was using a migrated account which apparently causes problems for Macs, so I had to make a new admin account. I really hope no one proves me wrong about this, but I'm sure that they, like any software company, track bugs as they're reported and make fixes in a future update. In fact, Finale's track record has been to do exactly that at least once or twice each year, so I'm not worried.
I need to work on making my posts shorter.
2009 Mac Mini - OSX 10.6.8
Late 2011 Mac Mini - OSX 10.8.3
Late 2012 Macbook Pro - OSX 10.8.3
Acer Veriton Dekstop - Windows 7 Ultimate
Finale (duh) - Upgrades every year
GPO Ultimate Collection
Logic Pro 9
Pro Tools 10
Way too many plug-ins... Candy doesn't taste good when eaten by the box. | | Back to Top | |
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