At last: Finale is dead

Finale is finally being discontinued. The reason is simple and technical in nature: after 35 years, its codebase has become exponentially more difficult to maintain, and it's now reached the point where the returns of any effort spent on it have diminished to the point where they have vanished entirely.

There is a crossgrade to Dorico being offered at a fairly low price, and the Finale installer will work for some time yet, but there will be no more updates, and in a year's time Finale will be completely dead as new installations no longer can be activated. After that it's only a question of time until operating systems change beyond the point where they'll support old code no longer updated for them.

Read more here:

https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/end-of-finale-new-journey-dorico-letter-from-president/

This composer's take on the situation and on the available alternatives is interesting. It's clear that not much has changed in the way of user-friendliness and note entry methodology even in more modern programs, and that the learning curve still is steep.

​In a way, that's great news.

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