Over a month ago Sibelius announced their Version 6. Like any software company they made a much bigger deal of it than the changes would justify. Still there were a few things in it that I wanted.
They started taking orders over a month ago. They have a not very generous deal for upgraders (I already have version 5) but still I decided to order it.
A month later, Version 6 is still on ‘backorder‘ whatever that means. I asked the rep I just spoke to what they mean when they say that it’s ‘available‘ (Yes I admit I was being a pain in the ass and that she is in no way at fault.).
She said, it means that you can order it.
I couldn’t resist pointing out that for me, available should also mean that once I order, they actually have something to ship.
Makes you wonder what’s going on behind the scenes. Was it pre-announced to freeze out the competition? Was it pre-announced to please their stock holders? Did they experience some late in the game software development crisis?
Technorati Tags: sibelius, musicnotation, prerelease
I’ve seen “available” mean either shipping, or pre-order with an announced shipping date. To not even have a ship-date seems a bit premature to be taking any kind of orders, “pre-order” or not.I’ve been a Finale man myself since version 1.0 (http://www.finalemusic.com/)I also lament a bit that Graphire Music Press (http://www.graphire.com/) went out of active development. For contemporary scores, it had a lot more potential power. However, I myself bought it, had a bunch of problems with stability, got a *really* terrible customer service experience from the developer, and ultimately just had to eat the cost and go back to Finale. Graphire never made the jump to Mac OS X, and I haven’t heard anything from them in about 10 years. Shame.
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