Not to be outdone by Sibelius, MakeMusic announced Finale 2010. Actually, lets reword that. Failing to incorporate any of the ideas presented in Sibelius 5, and failing to come up with anything new and interesting, MakeMusic announced Finale 2010.
Ok, so, what is new for the $99.95 pre-order price? Not much at all. They finally changed the way chords work in program. I can’t tell you when they last mucked with that, probably 10 years or more. It is not a revolutionary feature, but more of a “duh….it needed to be fixed” feature. Since the inception of the program you could not have chords in an empty measure. Now, Finale 2010 has a new “feature” that can do this. Blah Blah Blah.
What else? Well, you get a new font, more Garritan sounds, perhaps a working Aria player, hopefully fixed Percussion notation, Automatic Rehearsal Marks, and measure number controls. That last one really should be a “feature” but should have been fixed in Finale 2007. It is kind of like the version of Finale where they listed that Copyright symbol as a Feature. Those people from the middle states have humor don’t they?
In all, for $100……..worth it? The last version of Finale I updated to was 2007. It sort works on my 10.5 equipped Macs. Finale 2008 and 2009 TOGETHER had some interesting features I could have used, but not really. 2010 though……I dunno. I suppose two page editing, a better cursor, dynamic placement that is better, and chords that are better are noteworthy features to update to. Though MakeMusic wants $170 to upgrade me. Ha! Looks like Finale 2007 will be getting more use from me.