Adrian, you beat me to it!!

To be honest, though, my feeling is that they should extend the trade up offer for at least another month, or even longer. There are always people who just don't get the message. And I fear for the long-term prospects, with only the $600 flagship program available. I could understand dropping Allegro and SongWriter, leaving three price points: NotePad, PrintMusic, and Finale. But to have only the one seems to be shutting out a large section of possible buyers.

<Cue the "I will be moving to Dorico/Sibelius/MuseScore" chorus>

A small point of clarification on the price of Finale. Yes, the retail price is $600, but there are several avenues to get the latest version at a substantial discount. 

Cheers,
Michael Johnson
VP, Professional Notation
MakeMusic

Michael,

Does that mean the the $99 upgrade for current PM users is NOT available?

The promo code TRADEUP99 reduces it to $99 at time of checkout as mentioned in FAQ and email sent to PrintMusic customers

Cheers,

Michael Johnson

VP, Professional Notation

MakeMusic

Thanks for the clarification.

I have already loaded a test drive with PM 2014.5 and NotePad 2012. It will be the first drive that I upgrade to High Sierra. I will then test and post my results.

Normally, I am an early adopter and let the chips fall where they will in that regards but not this time. I have been hearing some ugly things about Microsoft Office for Mac and OS 10.13. I hope that they have been resolved by release date — if not, I won't update till they've been resolved. Word and Excel are necessary for my day job.

I trust MM to resolve any growing pains that occur w/ 25 once High Sierra ships.

I use a full version of Finale to produce .mus files that I file on Choir Genius for my Men's choir to use as practice files. Virtually all the choir use Finale Notepad as a playback device to practice their singing. For Finale to focus in future only on the full spectrum product seems to miss the overall ecosystem of music notation, and the ability of people to consume the notation files electronically. In this day and age to expect people to pay $600 for the right to hear their files played is ludicrous, and to have neither an iOS, nor an Android offering (or even a product roadmap according to the FAQ) is to totally misunderstand the current market shares of these devices, and the uses to which they are put. I know of numerous people including prominent professional opera singers and organists, who have dispensed with sheet music entirely and use an iPad to carry their entire repertoire with them at all times. My copy of Finale Songbook continues to give service, albeit I have to add a Bluetooth keyboard for it to work now. How hard is it to fix this product really?

However it seems to me that a partial, simple fix would be to allow the 30 day trial product to continue as a free playback device after the trial period, since it seems to only bar printing and saving, not playback. If this can be confirmed as the playback strategy by Finale, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise I will be biting the bullet and moving all my choir's repertoire to Sibelius/Scorch, and departing from the Finale platform.

Yes, you will be able to continue using Finale for playback, after the demo period is up.

If your chorus members have tablets, you could print your Finale files to PDF, and use ForScore to store and view them, and export the music files as MP3 for practice.

What Mike R says re Finale after the demo period. You can't print or save but you use screen shots to save pages to .pdf and then combine in a score.

Preview will do that on a Mac and is part of the OS (but Acrobat Pro is really fast and convenient). Windows users have many apps available. Last year, I sang a production of "Mahagonny" and did the latest cuts every night in Preview so I wouldn't have to flip through pages — wasn't hard at all once I got the hang of it. 

I use the Kindle App to read performing scores on my iPad. Loading PDF files can be done via email or through a free app from Amazon on my Mac for that purpose. If I never go back to holding sheet music, it's too soon.

In my case, my handicap has left me with one working arm — I can hold the iPad with it and turn pages with my thumb. Last year, I upgraded to a 12.9" iPad Pro... yes, it was worth it. 

+1 on the iPad Pro. Once you have it, you'll never look back!

Mike, is there a reason you're using Kindle rather than ForScore? The annotation and set lists are a pleasure.

>Mike, is there a reason you're using Kindle rather than ForScore? The annotation and set lists are a pleasure.<

Kindle was free and did exactly what I wanted. I never considered using anything else (except iBooks and that absolutely sucks for this use). Since opera score cuts involved editing the .pdf files anyway, I just did my annotations at the same time having entered them in Notes as the directions were given. As I sing out more, I see the value of ForScore for choral work and it looks that I should kick down the $10. I've a choral gig coming up next month and will have the opportunity to try it out then.

Thanks for the recommendation!

Any time. Spend the money, you won't regret it.

I learn more about it every couple of days, and I've been using it since the iPad first came out!

+1 for Ipad Pro 12.9 + ForScore.