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mmjw
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 16

Posted 6/26/2002 5:31 AM (GMT -6)

This doesn't seem to be common knowledge...

According to my suppliers, they are expecting FinMac 2003 the second week in July, with a possible free patch to make it OSX compatible. So I guess that means it won't be native for a while. Better than nothing I suppose.

Martin

fing
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2001
Total Posts : 11

Posted 6/26/2002 6:20 PM (GMT -6)

Is it known if F2k3 will work on OS8.6?

Thanks,

LF

jasako
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 440

Posted 6/26/2002 9:14 PM (GMT -6)

On 6/26/2002 10:31:00 AM, Martin Williams wrote:

>a possible free patch to make
>it OSX compatible. So I guess
>that means it won't be native
>for a while. Better than
>nothing I suppose.

is there anything posted on Coda's site about this
patch, like what it will do to address the many
issues raised in the forum?

====
John Polglase
jasako@mac.com

ludwigtheman
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2001
Total Posts : 93

Posted 6/28/2002 1:05 PM (GMT -6)

Did somebody say patch? How about
Finale version MADE for OS X. OS X has
been out for what a year and a half now
with some polls giving it well over a 50%
adoption rate. . . wake up and smell the
OS!

jasako
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 440

Posted 6/29/2002 8:22 PM (GMT -6)

On 6/28/2002 6:05:00 PM, Nathan Arnold wrote:
>Did somebody say patch? How
>about Finale version MADE for OS X.

I couldn't agree more! However Coda has made it
clear their native version of Finale will not come
out until 2004 and I think it unlikely they will be
swayed on this, regardless of how many Mac
users they may loose in the meantime.

Perhaps the issue for the immediate future should
be stability in Classic mode and if they patch 2003
to make it more so, then a poor 2nd place may
have to do - I agree it shouldn't be this way but I
for one am not going to spend $ for Sibelius
despite the frustration...

Jean8590
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 1999
Total Posts : 117

Posted 7/18/2002 6:05 PM (GMT -6)

Hmmm. Well, it is interesting to hear the excuses
given by programmers as to "why it is so HARD to
program for OS-X." Fooey. I know some
Engineering and Math folks who have replaced
over a half million dollars worth of various UNIX
work terminals with a couple of Mac OS-X G4
Powerbooks! They LOVE UNIX, and they just
love those Powerbooks! Now, I don't know
anything about the Systems except that they use
zeros and ones, but the folks who do tell me that
OS-X is a pure UNIX System, and any possible
problems lie with programmers who just don't
know how to program a UNIX Kernel System.
Remember, Mathematica was first written for Mac,
then for UNIX, and finally re-written to run on
Windows. And, it is fastest on Mac OS-X!

It is all too easy for programmers to condemn a
System that they just don't have any knowledge of
or experience with.

SO - - - will I kick in for Finale 2003, or just wait
until Finale bites the bullet and fixes it so it will run
on a UNIX platform? Darned if I know. But know
this - the Mac OS-X UNIX is a darned sight better
than any other programming environment out
there, including UNIX Mainframes. We don't
mention Windows in the same breath, it might
cause earthquakes or some other natural
disaster. :-)

Jean

somusque
Developer

Date Joined Feb 1999
Total Posts : 1169

Posted 7/19/2002 2:11 AM (GMT -6)

Hello,

you're a little ill-informed here. Obviously the Unix part of MacOSX is not a problem. And porting scientific Unix applications to OSX is trivial, too.

But a multimedia application, with graphics, Midi, and printing, and hundreds of dialogs etc. - that's a whole different dimension, and a huge porting effort.

All these things don't have to be ported to a Unix environment at all - they have to be ported to Apple's proprietory extensions to the Unix kernel. The GUI, Midi, and graphics on OSX have nothing to do with Unix standards.

Cheers,
Tobias

Stocky60
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2002
Total Posts : 3

Posted 7/20/2002 3:54 AM (GMT -6)

>>But a multimedia application, with graphics, Midi, and printing, and hundreds of dialogs etc. - that's a whole different dimension, and a huge porting effort.<<

Not necessarily. As the lead on Norton Utilities for Macintosh, I've not had a chance to catch up on what is required for handling MIDI in OS X, but I'm quite familiar with the rest of it. The graphics, printing, dialogs, and such can be handled by Carbon with almost no change to any code written since OS 8.1, and only minor changes to code older than that.

Where previous versions of NUM got down and dirty, bypassing the file system and occasionally bypassing even device drivers, that stuff had to be completely rewritten from scratch for OS X and involved creating a few kernel extensions. But porting the high-level engines and the GUI was trivial, maybe five or six person- weeks for the whole thing.

What I'm failing to understand here is why Finale is a significantly larger effort. Yeah, it has some new features, but I would think that the most important new feature would be working with the current OS! I mean, I know what it's like to be shorthanded on both the development and QA staff. (That's why NUM 6 to NUM 7 was more than a year.) But c'mon! Doesn't Coda have more than one dedicated Mac person?

I've been a Finale user for seven years (though not through my main job, obviously). But I feel like Coda is stretching my loyalty to the limit here.

[ Disclaimer: Opinions here are personal and should not be construed as representing Symantec Corp. ]

somusque
Developer

Date Joined Feb 1999
Total Posts : 1169

Posted 7/20/2002 4:31 AM (GMT -6)

> What I'm failing to understand here is
> why Finale is a significantly larger
> effort.

It may not be, but what Coda has been doing is not just trying to port the app. They have been reworking the GUI in many ways, revisited all dialogs and made sure they comply with the latest Aqua guidelines where possible etc.

Obviously, all of the GUI related new features in Finale 2003 have been made with OS X in mind.

I don't know if Coda has 1 or 2 dedicated Mac developers for Finale. But certainly not as many as Symantec.

Cheers,
Tobias

Stocky60
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2002
Total Posts : 3

Posted 7/20/2002 6:05 AM (GMT -6)

>>I don't know if Coda has 1 or 2 dedicated Mac developers for Finale. But certainly not as many as Symantec.<<

If you read the credits in the Norton Utilities for Macintosh 7.0 About box, you will see 15 people listed under Development. What that doesn't tell you is that it is the entire Development team for all Symantec Mac products. It also doesn't tell you that, of those 15, two (Dick C and Rick G) did no programming because they were full-time managers, one other manager (Leslie L) programmed maybe half-time, one was half-time because he was also a QA Engineer (Blake H), and one was part-time until he graduated college two months ago (Ryan M). Also, as the architects, I and one other (Bill A) are supposed to spend part of our time in research and design for future directions.

That leaves about 10.5 people to develop Norton Utilities, Norton AntiVirus, and Norton Personal Firewall, along with the suite products Norton SystemWorks and Norton Internet Security. All I'm saying is that if we could do it for all that, Coda could probably do it for Finale, and maybe some of their other products. But if they're shorthanded, I'd probably be willing to help out on the side. ;)

somusque
Developer

Date Joined Feb 1999
Total Posts : 1169

Posted 7/20/2002 6:27 AM (GMT -6)

> 15 people for all Symantec Mac products

See, Coda doesn't have money for a separate 15-people Mac department. That's the difference.

> That leaves about 10.5 people
> to develop ... Mac ...

Great! Sounds doable. More human resources for just Mac than Coda has for Mac and Windows together. And they too, develop many different products in the music notation department.

And obviously, Symantec products have the advantage that everybody will agree that regular updating is necessary, whether there are exciting new features or not. This is different @ Coda. They have to come up with strong reasons for upgrading each year.

So they probably tried to develop new features and a Mac OS X version, but the latter just didn't make it. It was probably clear to them that they would lose too much in sales if the only new thing they released this year were an OS X version.

Besides, I don't know one professional audio or notation studio where they have started to use Mac OS X. Especially the pro audio business is much slower than even Coda. Never change a running system ...

Cheers,
Tobias

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