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DEAR FRIENDS, 

I'm running Finale 25.5.0.259, on OS10.10.5.  I am upgrading my MacBook pro 8,2 - have increased ram to 16 GB. I have a 500GB SSD hard drive waiting to be installed. I have been holding off because I continue to go back and forth about upgrading OSX. I have very often relied on your combined wisdom so I turn to you all now to help this decision. Before I install the new SSD it's best that I come to a decision. So, should I update to High Sierra? Or, Sierra? I've read conflicting reports and would appreciate your opinions. Thanks in advance, Thomas

 

MACBOOKPRO 8,2

OS 10.10.5

FINALE 25.5.0.259

16GB RAM

 

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From what I read on the forums, Finale 25.5 works fine with High Sierra (and Sierra, too). A new MacOs, Mojave, is coming soon. Don't rush to update to that one, get High Sierra now, while it is still available.

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My $0.02 as a longtime development seed tester for Apple: there is little benefit from High Sierra compared with Sierra and the file system changed from HFS+ to APFS, which is better for SSDs, but isn't going to provide that much difference for you. Some apps, understandably, had to be updated by me to run effectively: Reason, PathFinder and FileMaker Pro (I have v13, which just doesn't really work anymore). Sierra didn't have quite as many issues in that regard. I don't think HS was a great OS and Mojave is definitely better in that regard (at least it has some new functionality, though not much). So I would suggest either Sierra or jump on the public beta of Mojave (not perfect but not bad at this point). No harm in just going with Sierra. High Sierra provided little or no enhancements that I found compelling; Mail windows open in split screen-yay, I guess. Finale will run just fine in any of these, so the issue is really your other apps, most of which will be fine in HS as well as Mojave. 

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AFAIK, MakeMusic has not communicated about the compatibility of Finale with Mojave, so I wouldn't rush...

Unless you have a copy of Sierra, the only (free) OS available on the Apple site is High Sierra.

If you do, Sierra should be fine, but your next update will soon be Mojave only.

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MakeMusic has had trouble in the past with Apple changing something about their OS at the last minute before release, so it is not surprising MM is not commenting about Finale 25's expected compatibility, much less the unreleased v26.

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>there is little benefit from High Sierra<

 

Unless you are on an SSD formatted APFS.

 

>and the file system changed from HFS+ to APFS, which is better for SSDs, but isn't going to provide that much difference for you.<

 

Can't agree with that at all. APFS has a mind blowing benefit. I'll explain below.

 

>AFAIK, MakeMusic has not communicated about the compatibility of Finale with Mojave, so I wouldn't rush...<

 

Some have reported issues with the 10.14 beta. Probably not a good idea to go to Mojave till your app developers give it the all clear.

 

Now here's the wicked cool part: It takes a few minutes to completely restore a System drive if it's formatted 10.13.x or later over APFS. If you were to say, upgrade to Mojave and find a problem, restoring to High Sierra is extremely quick via Time Machine using Snapshots. Restoring to Sierra, OTOH, takes hours via Time Machine.

 

For Snapshots to work, your System drive must be an SSD formatted APFS with OS 10.13.1 or later must be only the one OS—this does not work on a partitioned drive or if another OS can be found anywhere (I must disconnect my El Cap test drive first). I found this out by accident when I updated to 10.13.4 and found that an external monitor no longer worked. While preparing for a full TM restore (about 10 hours), I stumbled into the Snapshot and I was back to 10.13.3. Because I didn't know what I was doing, the entire procedure took eight minutes.

 

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=64689&p=553667&hilit=APFS+cool#p553667 

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In my experience, APFS has made no real difference. Maybe a small difference when opening files, but if you use a Finder replacement like PathFinder not so much (and I hadn't noticed much difference with the Finder either). If you need to restore a system, then sure it will be faster, but that's not the typical use case (haven't had to do it in quite some time and certainly not under High Sierra), and for many people the file issues with certain apps outweigh the positives. HS was the first apple seed that I didn't bother testing and waited until the commercial release, and was sorry I had installed it, given how much it cost me to update a few apps that just wouldn't work with it (and FM Pro, in the version we use at my day job, is totally borked). 

 

But this isn't a thread on the pros and cons of High Sierra. I just wanted to make it clear for the first poster that there is little to be gained with HS and it will soon be replaced by Mojave anyway. I'd wait until Mojave or install the beta (which lags behind what we get with the development seed) on a test partition or USB drive. There are ways to get Sierra, and I suggested that in place of High Sierra because Sierra avoided many of the issues inherent in HS. If HS had some really killer features, then sure. For me, APFS was not a killer feature. YMMV.

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The reason I'm suggesting not to rush to Modave (except indeed on a test partition) is to wait until it is proven compatible with 25.5 (and the upcoming Finale 26, announced for later this year). Remember that it took several updates for Finale 25 (25.5) to be 100 % compatible with High Sierra ! Those who installed High Sierra too early were in trouble

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Which is why I suggested a clone or partition so we are in agreement

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>The reason I'm suggesting not to rush to Modave (except indeed on a test partition) is to wait until it is proven compatible with 25.5 ... If you need to restore a system, then sure it will be faster, but that's not the typical use case (haven't had to do it in quite some time and certainly not under High Sierra),

 

Since a straight upgrade to Mojave from High Sierra is completely different and can be reversed in a few seconds (plus the time it takes to shut down and boot into the Recovery partition), I recommend that you don't dismiss what you don't know and are unwilling to read about. 

 

> I just wanted to make it clear for the first poster that there is little to be gained with HS and it will soon be replaced by Mojave anyway.<

 

Just as I wanted to be perfectly clear that there is a huge advantage to High Sierra—especially if contemplating Mojave.

 

>But this isn't a thread on the pros and cons of High Sierra.<

 

This is exactly a thread about that subject. From the OP:

>Before I install the new SSD it's best that I come to a decision. So, should I update to High Sierra?<

 

Since the subject is High Sierra, wouldn't it be nice if the OP received correct information about it? Being "in agreement" doesn't count for much when the information is incorrect.

 

>FM Pro, in the version we use at my day job, is totally borked<

 

Really? Sorry to hear that. It works fine for me over OS 10.13.3 but no one uses all aspects of it—so, whatever it is, I haven't encountered it. One would think that, since Apple owns Claris, they would have gotten that ironed out completely.

 

 

>Which is why I suggested a clone or partition so we are in agreement<

 

Absolutely not. A removable hard drive, no problem. A partitioned SSD containing more than one OS negates any of the advantages of HPFS—if anything goes wrong, you will be spending hours in Terminal trying to undo it while looking at web sites that contradict each other. Been there, done that.

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I can tell you that Finale 25.5.0.259 on Mojave beta is not 100% reliable.  I've experienced crashes when attempting to use the Expression tool to change Tempos, etc...

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That's why it is called Mojave beta. It is unreasonable to expect that any incompatibility with a beta version of an unreleased OS is Finale's responsibility.

 

Finale has announced an upgrade. If that is not compatible with the release version of Mojave, then that would be a problem that needs addressing.

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Yep.

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>I can tell you that Finale 25.5.0.259 on Mojave beta is not 100% reliable. <

 

This has been widely reported.

 

 

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