Aaaand… muted.
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Computer hardware sometimes dies. Just because you have an older iMac still running Finale 2014 doesn’t mean it will still be working. There are hard drive failures, other components can wear out over long periods like capacitors. Computer hardware is not some magic invincible thing that lasts forever.
Even if the computer by some miracle continues to work for many many years, there are natural disasters that can happen, fires, etc. And then you might not be able to get Finale going again on a replacement system without the activation server running.
Hi @m_ravel,
Welcome on Dorico’s board! 
I don’t know if you are working on big symphonic orchestra works, or not, but if you do, then you’ll find the real power of Dorico when you have to do such a work. The app will save you a lot of time and effort.
I am a Dorico user since version 3.1 and I could say that the program seriously evolves with every single update, and also becomes more, and more intuitive for the newcomers.
I’m even using Dorico as a replacement of Cubase for composing and arranging with Virtual Instruments.
Enjoy your Dorico journey,
Thurisaz
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I get your point, and switching notation software is no small thing. Just be forewarned.
Hi Rob,
I know that switching the notation software isn’t an easy step, but still…
Ask yourself the following question: “Why do I need to keep creating more Finale projects, that at some point I will have to transfer to Dorico, Sibelius or MuseScore?! Isn’t it pointless?!”
Best regards,
Thurisaz
in these cases it is fastest to input the notes as simple eight-notes/quavers. Once you are ready, select all of them and hit 4 once, turning them into 16th-notes/semiquavers, spaced by sixteenth-rests/semiquaver-rests.
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Then move them forward by a 16th note grid (alt-cmd-right). Exactly my thoughts when I saw the picture. I don’t think moving stuff and transforming it after the fact is in ex-Finale users’ DNA…
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One doesn’t need to be clever for this, it is sufficient to be lazy 
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@Rob_Rowberry, I completely understand. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
My wife is refraining from updating her computer just in -the very likely- case we need to tweak a thing or two from our old scores. She’s learning Dorico as well, but is also keeping Finale in place for convenience.
One of the things I will not miss is the sheer amount of crashes I experienced with Finale. More than with any other software I’ve ever owned. I’ve had Dorico open for the past week and haven’t had a single crash. Not one. The other thing I love is having to do less. Even as a complete Dorico newbie, I work faster because things just look better with less tweaks, which was not my experience with Finale. But I’m not saying any of this to convince you, because everyone needs to travel their own journey. I’m just sharing my experience.
It always seems that simple programs to learn also give you less control.
On this, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to push back a bit. I’ve learned to drive using stick so it feels natural to me, yet every car I’ve owned as an adult has been automatic. The cars perform the same functions but the interface differs. I like being able to do a forte + hairpin + piano and have it be perfectly aligned, in one shot like you can do in Dorico. In Finale these are all separate operations, and can get misaligned very easily. Is this a huge problem for me? Absolutely not. There are many other little things like this that when I switched to Dorico, and I realized I didn’t need to do, convinced me Dorico was for me. Same quality of work, in less time.
With today’s virtual machines, you can very easily keep an old operating system running Finale which I think is what a lot of people will end up doing. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong on this. People like the tools that they like, and that’s perfectly fine!
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Amen!
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Not doing orchestral right now, but I’m doing string quintets. Finale has linked parts, but the Dorico implementation is wildly superior (in my opinion). The only thing I’ve had to touch on the parts is the system breaks, and that’s it! Select all layouts, choose Graphic, print, and boom, a whole bunch of PDFs right there. The whole concept of “flows” is quite clever. Having everything in one file is SO convenient!
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I have absolutely no problem with that logic.
(In a similar vein, for Dorico, I’m sticking with Win10 as long as I can. I also have Linux running other old hardware, where web browsing and routine office tasks are a speedy delight by comparison - would really like to have Dorico on Linux!)
This - a virtual machine is the safest way to do this long term. You still need a backup solution for the virtual machine, and hopefully the technology doesn’t change too much in the future (if you went with a platform that lasts). But anybody who needs to keep Finale running long term, I would suggest running in a virtual machine with regular backups being taken of the virtual machine files (including offsite). If the physical system dies or some natural disaster happens to the site, you can restore the virtual machine files to another system and boot up the virtual machine up again, and Finale should have no idea it has changed computers if you do it correctly, and won’t require re-activation.
@Rob_Rowberry that is what I would suggest you do if you absolutely must continue to use Finale to make new scores long-term.
Doesn’t matter to me what someone else does, but just because something works now doesn’t mean anything a few years from now. Unless you are ok with a decade+ old Mac that doesn’t run the latest macOS and is likely way slow compared with a modern CPU running a M-class chip, even Finale 27.4 will seem like a relic in a few years. Last year I ditched my five-year-old Intel MBP, which still ran, but was getting bogged down since macOS only gets slower as CPUs no longer support the architecture that is optimal for newer releases of the OS. And going back, on occasion, to make a minor tweak in one of my many Finale files feels like I’m working in a relic. So many things that I now can do faster and more efficiently in Dorico make the longstanding issues with Finale seem 20x worse. Remember-development has ceased (it really ceased, apparently, to a large degree around 2022!) . The Finale you have today is not going to get better next year. I mean, one can run Word 5 for the Mac (which was really awesome in its day, but that was back in the 90’s), but it won’t do a lot of things we assume modern word processors can do in 2025, and the UX is clunky. Finale’s UX was one of the worst things about it; inconsistent, complicated, inefficient, etc. And it was often very unreliable, certainly after F2012. So tread carefully.
I’m a recent convert as well and am loving Dorico now that I’ve got a bit of it under my fingers, but to say “Finale wasn’t built by people making music” seems both self-serving and intentionally ignorant of the facts. Phil and Bruce, and all the others involved from the beginning, were all working musicians who just happened to be great coders. Look up a little history before you trash the people who revolutionized the whole damn industry.
I know this is basically a sales video, but it’s a great education on the early days and the people involved:
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I didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers. Sorry if this struck a nerve. Let me amend my statement to something less self-serving and more factually correct: Finale was built by people who revolutionized the whole damn industry but couldn’t be bothered to keep up with modern UX expectations yet kept charging for upgrades that added little to no functionality.
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It was around 1990 that someone (in the USA) showed me Finale. It came with three different books to explain how to use it. I quickly decided that life was to short to get dragged down that rabbit hole, and stuck to ms paper and pen. When I heard of Sibelius from another friend (in the UK) I was so impressed that I immediately invested in an Acorn RPC computer, and subsequently a PC just to be able to use it (at that time I was otherwise a NeXT user). When Sibelius shot itself in the foot and Dorico was born, I jumped ship and have never regretted it. I guess I was just lucky.
David
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That’s my story too, so perhaps it’s good instincts rather than luck?
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Today I installed Finale 27.4.1 .146 ( the latest version) on my Mac that is running Sequoia 15.4.1. And then plugged in my MIDI keyboard etc. Everything works perfectly. I tried for quite a while to do everything I could to break something. It was really solid. I know MakeMusic cannot officially say Finale is compatible with Sequoia because they released the last version last year before Sequoia was released… but so far it is really solid and runs great…and really fast!
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Good for you. If you do decide or need to come back to Dorico we will be here to help you.
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