Before anyone has had a chance to look at it let alone shipping units and the next OS release? 

Good luck with getting an answer to that!

I passed on paying the $500 to rent one of those development kits with the refurb'd Minis. 

I think Jeff has a legit question. Finale 2014 had some major issues with macOS updates and it took MakeMusic several months to fix various issues, resulting in Finale 2014.5. Finale blamed it all on “last minute changes by Apple” but the Public Betas had similar issues prior to that (I had to downgrade from a public beta to the previous stable macOS just to use Finale.)

I’ve used Finale for about a decade now, certainly not as long as some, but I have a fair few projects in musx files. If Finale won’t support ARM Macs, I’d like to begin the process of transferring to another program sooner rather than later.

It's a very legit question in October if Apple ships the Mini or a laptop with the A12z — or next year or the year after when Apple is expected to complete the transition to ARM. Right now? It's beyond premature.

If Apple's scheduling is on target, the first year they will be able to discontinue OS support for the Intel based Macs will be 2025. Seeing how often Apple misses these target dates, it will be surprising if they hit that one. If you're a longtime Finale user, you probably remember the Panic of 2012 when the Mac OS and Finale were to be 64 bit only. If not, look at the old forum. Apple missed that one by 7 years.

>I had to downgrade from a public beta<

So what? No company supports beta OS.

Right, I don’t expect software to work on a public beta either. My only point was that the public beta in August showed the same problems that Finale said they were “unaware of” in October. From the outside it looked like they waited until several weeks after the OS release to begin working on the problems that came up. Finale easily could have downloaded the public beta before the OS release and started work on compatibility issues (and, maybe they did; I even flagged a few of them that I ran into to their tech support. ) I am hoping they take a more proactive approach with Apple ARM.

At this point, nothing the Head Office does instills any sense of security. Given the revolving doors of the last few years, I would put no stock in anything they say, one way or another. The chances are that, by the time it's an issue, whoever promised you anything will no longer be there.

Although it's fun to speculate over future, we do know a lot about the past. The 2011–2014 period was no fun for any developer having anything to do with Apple. They did change things regularly and the tail that wagged the dog was Intel.

We've known this was coming since Intel announced it in their annual report to investors (2015? 2016? I forget). The Perpetually Disappointed at MacRumors (I'm disappointed that Apple...) were in their usual twin camps: those disappointed that the 2017 Macs might be released with ARM vs those disappointed that they weren't. That Apple had never hinted their direction made no difference — it never does.

There are only two things we know: Apple will move to ARM. They will follow the laws of California and their agreements with the rest of the world regarding hardware and OS support—that's where my 5 year timeline is from. 

We don't know the following but can guess. History tells us that it might take longer, it won't be painless, some companies will step up to the plate while others won't and that, despite promises made, we don't know where anyone will land in that regards.

Please don't let anything I write stop anyone from worrying or being disappointed.

Just remember that Adobe Flash support was to be gone from the internet January 1, 2017. Now they're saying December, 2020. Anyone wanna bet? Not I.

All I was wondering, does MM have a statement to make about this. I didn't ask for any predictions or promises. Like other companies, MM never gives specifics when talking about their future plans. But if they did acknowledge some of the challenges facing them, that would be encouraging to me.

Jeff, 

Unless they release a statement that says “We won’t be updating Finale to accommodate ARM Macs,” let’s assume they are aware of it, and it will be a challenge.

> does MM have a statement to make about this/<

No company will until they have something to announce. There is no reason to expect anything before October — and only if Apple releases product by then and MakeMusic has something to announce.

This is a users board. None of the regulars work for MM.