Finale Forum

Hi all,

I've been locked away writing my PhD dissertation, and I haven't kept abreast of where things are at with Mac OS Sierra and Finale...

My question is: Should I upgrade to Sierra?

I'm currently running El Capitan, and I'm about to embark on some Finale editing, and last time I looked, people weren't sure about Finale 25 and Sierra. Are there any issues hanging around with compatibility? (Not even sure where Sierra is with Logic Pro X..)

Any feedback would be great before I hit the upgrade key.

Thanks,
ANDREW

Sierra is very nearly at the end of MacOS's annual cycle, so a good time to upgrade to it as most of the bugs will have been worked out.

MakeMusic released Finale v25 as a 64-bit app in August 2016, and there have been 3 updates with new features and bug fixes since then, with more promised.
One of the main hesitations was the lack of third-party (mostly Jari's) plug-ins in 64-bits, but these have now been released.

Overall, I find Finale 25 fast, stable, and with some very nice features. I'm sure someone will be along to say otherwise.

Logic Is Apple's baby, and has been updated regularly. Works fine with Sierra.

BuonTempi wrote:One of the main hesitations was the lack of third-party (mostly Jari's) plug-ins in 64-bits, but these have now been released.

I thought they were nonetheless still broken. True?

Some people have had crashing or other problems if they have too many or particular combinations of some of the plug-ins. I have 16 of JW's plug-ins installed, including Change, Rhythm & Meter, Staff Polyphony, and not had any bother.

I think I saw here somewhere that there may also be an issue of one function in one of the plug-ins not quite working as expected.

"But apart from that....."

I recently bought a new computer, a Mac Mini with Sierra installed. I set it up with Finale 2012 and 25, plus QuicKeys. Everything works fine except TG Tools. I use the "Align Dynamics" feature constantly. It works fine on my El Capitan setup on the old computer but is flakey on Sierra. The align utility has a setting for the amount of vertical movement when using hotkeys to trigger the align. This vertical setting does not work on Sierra, giving instead a random displacement which is unadjustable and not acceptable.

It's likely that most will not be as picky as I and probably will not encounter problems. However, my Sierra setup on the new computer is unworkable at present for my everyday work. What I'm saying, I guess, is to leave yourself a back door so you can restore your OS in case things don't work out as you'd expect.

N.

BuonTempi wrote:Some people have had crashing or other problems if they have too many or particular combinations of some of the plug-ins. I have 16 of JW's plug-ins installed, including Change, Rhythm & Meter, Staff Polyphony, and not had any bother...

About JW plug-ins and Finale 25, isn't it a problem affecting the Windows side only ?
I use Finale 25 on the Mac (not all the JW plug-ins, though) and haven't encountered it yet. Any other testimonies ?

You're running El Cap. No reason not to jump to Sierra unless you might be affected the TG Tools issue. Now that Sierra is on its 6th release, these little else to worry about. If your Mac has an NVidia card, you need to check to see if there are driver issues that affect your card—for the rest of us, it's all good.

Some of my older apps actually run better in 10.12 than 10.11 (Finale 2014.5 included). Many older apps will no longer install but, if you're running them already, there's no issue.

I was told last night that the next incremental Finale 25 update out soon will be timed to the release of MusicXML 3.1. Whether or not it will hit the June target is unknown but it is coming. MM is coding with Sierra and future OS in mind.

The current release of Logic requires El Cap but there are rumors that the next release will require Sierra. I'm not sure that decision has been made yet.

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone for their responses to this post of mine from a while back! It's taken me some time to get back to it, but I do appreciate the expert knowledge as always. I think I'll hold off from upgrading for a little longer.

Cheers
ANDREW

My only concern is that Office has had major issues with OS 10.13 High Sierra Beta. I never install OS beta releases so I can't verify this firsthand but, if true, I am hosed till it gets worked out.

My Libraries drive is on El Capitán. It will be the one I upgrade to 10.13 first to see if Office will still run. If not, my main drive will be unaffected but if so, I will then update my main SSD. After the test, I will restore my Libraries drive from a backup.

I keep a boot drive on El Cap even though I almost never use it. Certain old installers no longer run in anything later.