Comments about:

Notation Giants Battle Over Mac Users

Bottom line - the quality of scores produced comes down, in the end, to the creativity of the composer. I've been using Finale for years now (since that is what my teaching institution had invested in), but have also admired what I've seen of Sibelius. Both programs are a godsend to the composer/arranger, but let's not forget that in essence the respective companies are producing tools for craftsmen, not the works of art themselves. Can you imagine carpenters arguing about the brand of hammers they use, or being swayed by the claims of rival saw manufacturers? I suspect in the end that people who use both products will stay with what they are familiar with, because learning a whole new way of interacting with the software will slow down the creative process.
Andrew Lyons

well actually I am amongst other things a carpenter and a musician
and yes carpenters do argue about the merits of hammers and their weight and length etc (general agreement is if you can afford it) estwing's are the best .
this is not so clear cut with notation software however .

I used Finale for 10 years and then switched to Sibelius. No contest at all in terms of usability - Sibelius wins hands down. All of my musical friends that could afford to have switched as well. I've written tens times the music since switching than I ever did with Finale.

Yes, clearly, users are willing to switch if given a strong enough incentive, and that's the reason Sibelius and Finale are getting so passionate. Interestingly, I think Sibelius users have become evangelical about their choice much in the same way that Mac users are. Now, the Finale community is reacting, not just corporate but, more interestingly, Finale users. I think this kind of debate is really healthy for both communities. It may drive a user to switch to software that's better suited to their needs, but even more so, I think it forces a closer evaluation of the software. Both Finale and Sibelius have improved at a faster rate as competitors than Finale did on its own. That's not coincidence.

I manage the computing labs at Juilliard, and to set the record straight, we support BOTH programs in our labs. We're not in the business of pushing one software package over another - we want to provide students with exposure to both programs. I'm the one who ordered the Finale 2004 site license mentioned on their site, and I'm also in the process of upgrading our Sibelius site license to version 3. We plan to continue to keep both up-to-date and available to our students for the forseeable future.

Finale and Sibelius are both fantastic, and the competition between the two has only been beneficial to users on both sides of the fence.

As an active composer and 10-year Finale user, I do have to admit that Finale on OS X can't get here soon enough! Sibelius definitely has that advantage, though I suspect we'll all forget about it as soon as Finale 2004 available, just like the long wait for Digital Performer 4 seems a distant memory (or maybe I'm just blocking it out).

And I heartily second Andrew Lyons' comment, above. He nailed it.

Steve
www.stevenbryant.com

I do not agree with Andrew Lyons

I used Finale 98 for a few years and then got entrenched in OS X with version 10.1 . Sibelius' website and mission statement struck me and I went in for the competitive upgrade to Sibelius 2. Sibelius might be a "whole new way of interacting", but it is sooo much more intuitive. My process with Finale was having to consult the manual constantly to figure out how to notate stuff that I had already tried. The processes just wouldn't stick. Talk about slowing down the creative process. With Sibelius, it's like once I've learned how to do it, I don't really forget it because it is layed out in a more intuitive and natural way. Like Birdsong, I've been so much more productive with Sibelius.

I haven't seen what Finale has become in the meantime, so I might give them a chance. But when I emailed them a year and a half ago (????!!!) asking them when they would be releasing an OSX version, they responded rather rudely and I was left with a bad taste in my mouth.

It's obvious to me that Sibelius is a product and company that simply comes more from the heart. And that is important to me as a creative individual.