What opportunity? Desktop notation as a moneymaker hasn’t been a lucrative business opportunity for years. Finale has barely been a decimal point on Peaksware’s $45B bottom line and MakeMusic has renamed SmartMusic, its cash cow, to MakeMusic Cloud.

Users who want to continue with Finale will be able to continue doing so for years. If you need to purchase newer hardware to ensure longevity, you have a long time to do and can transition until the day that the license servers no longer remain online. Those with 27 have another year of tech support.

MuseScore and Dorico have been loud about continued development and Dorico will gain more Finale-like features—Daniel has said so. One can assume that Sibelius will continue as well.

For decades, I used Encore for my church work and Finale for heavy lifting and publication. Encore’s ease of use outweighs its amateurish look when printed. It has also been dead over a decade but I can still use it to edit my old work if needed. it runs on any Mac first made 2018 or earlier but best on those from 2012–2018 that can boot in Mojave. I have all sorts of options regarding those files but the simplest one is to just do nothing. All were saved to pdf and xml seven years ago if I change my mind.

Don’t get m wrong. I still want Encore 6 for my church and studio work. The ability to open my old work and have it look good when printed would be a boon to me. Nothing has ever been faster for creating “down and dirty” lead sheets, praise band charts and 4-part choral arrangements. To open those files in Overture 6 would be great, too.

I don’t like MuseScore or Dorico but I’ve had both since 2018 use them as needed. This will likely change as both get better until that day when I create new work in one or the other — but I’m not in a hurry and there’s no need to rush things. I see no reason why the major works that I began in Finale won’t be completed in 27 assuming that I ever get them done.

People tell me not to count out Notion — 7 is coming as has been promised since 2021. Sorry, when Fender didn’t update 6 to handle 64bit only VIs, I lost interest. Dolet 8 for Sibelius ensured that i never needed Notion again. The iPad app is very good, exports MusicXML 3 and is updated regularly but is not dependent on the desktop version at all.

I might as well cry over DMCS being incompatible with System 7.1 (I was able to hack the license to get it working in 7). Well, those files did open and Save in Opcode Overture and I was able to convert them later to pdf and xml. You figure it out and do what’s necessary.

I agree with Mick and Keith:

“You can’t always get what you want. … but if you try sometime, you get what you need. Oh yeah!”