This is me exactly.
I was looking into “F#$%le” the other day for a specific use case that I knew I could handle there with a 3rd-party plugin. I haven’t actively used it since about 2013 (which was when I jumped ship to Sibelius, with which I was substantially happier).
I pulled up the website, took a peek at the “what’s new” section and saw the screen grabs and my skin just started crawling. They haven’t improved their UI, or their “menus with submenus with submenus” tactics since I was first exposed to their program back in 2007 (and long before that I’m sure). I can’t believe that ever used to be my world. To their credit, it IS a powerful program, but it most definitely isn’t for me. I’m so grateful that things have changed—at least as far as Dorico is concerned 
I immediately thought to myself, “well, this special project isn’t that special. I guess I’ll just wait.” lol.
I’m sort of working on a running list right now of these things. Some of them I’m assuming would be helpful not just to me but to a lot of other people as well. Every once in a while I cross something off the list because I realize it’s not a bug or shortcoming but rather something that just took me longer than I expected to find. When I get a little more comfortable that I’ve got a list of things that doesn’t have any I-just-hadn’t-figured-it-out-yet items I’ll be happy to post them.
I don’t think this forum is too negative at all. Actually I think the opposite is true - there is a certain fanboyism and blind devotion on this forum that sometimes masks the fact that for a lot of money (almost $600 for many of us), this is a product that is still buggy, unfinished and often slow (and I have Dorico 2.1 so am surprised how buggy it still is). Not to say it doesn’t do good things because I do like it and believe it will get there, but let’s not forget that Sibelius is a heck of a program and has the maturity of a finished program that is faster and doesn’t have the glaring bugs that Dorico has. IMO, there are other sites/boards that offer a more objective view of Dorico than this forum.
With respect, who cares whether the forum has a particular ratio of complainers to devotees? You get substantive, helpful answers to your questions on this forum, and in pretty short order. Isn’t that what everyone wants?
If by “other forums offer a more objective view,” you mean “people complain more,” you may well be right, I don’t know. But I (and most other users, I imagine) frequent the forum to ask and answer questions, thus improving the experience and the program for everyone, as well as deepening our own knowledge of the software. That’s why the forum exists, and that’s why I’m here.
It may also be that some of what is perceived here to be “fanboyism” is often merely professional courtesy and showing appreciation, recognizing the individual we’re speaking to is a real person.
Anonymity objectifies people, and the Internet is rife with it. Incivility is the inevitable result.
If that is true, I wonder why Avid have banned any comparison of Sibelius and Dorico on their “official” Sibelius forum? Why should they be bothered about people comparing Sibelius with a half-finished bug pile?
To quote the community guidelines on that forum, "We’ve never deleted posts which mentioned other notation programs … " but two sentences later, “… we will be removing the Dorico threads.”
Is it just sour grapes against their former employees, or are they running scared?
As a former (and still occasional) Finale user I can’t help wondering what you mean by “glaring bugs” in Dorico.
Finale is an ancient program from the 1990’s that frankly I’m surprised anyone has been using for the last 5-10 years. Finale is a pretty low bar to be comparing either Dorico or Sibelius to. I’d say Sibelius is more the high bar that Dorico should be compared to when someone is contemplating which notation software to buy in 2018. Again, I like Dorico, but I find it a lot more buggy and slow than Sibelius at this point.
eboats, the fact that you’re running a version of Sibelius that’s four years old is telling - there have been paid updates since that have introduced new bugs, necessitating further paid updates to fix them. I’m talking bugs that affect old scores that ran fine in previous versions (the one where hidden rests became unhidden in parts cost me days of work).
OK, so we don’t both live on the same planet. But each to his own.
Sibelius has never matched Finale for control of music engraving IMO, but at least it was easier to use for what it did do.
Finale is a pretty low bar to be comparing either Dorico or Sibelius to.
I use Finale and Sibelius. Dorico has replaced Sibelius completely, other than stuff that other people have started…
Finale I’m still reluctantly using.
Yes.
There are certainly many things to be annoyed and frustrated about in Finale, not least the apparently frozen development speed. But I wouldn’t call it a low bar to compare to, absolutely not. I appreciate that this is a matter of perspective and one’s particular requirements though.
Re Finale vs Sibelius.
Way back years ago I first tried Finale and found it confusing. I then tried Sibelius version 1 and it seemed quite intuitive. I went with Sibelius.
It just seems a case of what you find easy to understand from the get go. For me it was definitely Sibelius.
This is straying a little off topic: we don’t have to disparage Finale or Sibelius to admit that Dorico has made some amazing leaps towards redefining what a notation program can do and constitutes a challenge to pre-existing programs.
Indeed. I’m not sure I would even put them in the same product category. What they have in common is that the end product is hopefully a finely engraved musical score. But the steps to get there are not all that similar. Moreover, Dorico is uniquely positioned to integrate more closely with the DAW world, bringing together two different worlds: one that conceives of music through dots and stems and another that conceives of music through “piano rolls” and controllers.
With that in mind, I would put Notion and Overture in Dorico’s category before I would group Dorico with Finale, Sibelius, or MuseScore.
Not that any of that really matters. What matters is how good the output is and how easy it was to get that output. Clearly Dorico has re-imagined the process.