MakeMusic has released its 2004b update to Finale 2004 for OS X. Most significantly, the release adds Mac OS 9 support. There are numerous bugfixes in the new release, including improvements to the articulation tool, edit commands, expression tool, lyrics, mass edit tool, measure tool, interapplication MIDI, MIDI pan, saving audio files and opening and saving MIDI and Finale files, playback, plug-ins and FinaleScript, printing, setup, entry, and many other tools. The release also adds a fix to a performance glitch with creating TIFF graphics, adds support for OS X patch list names, and fixes a crash with the Search and Replace function. However, there's still no support for EPS export or PostScript listings "because of limitations in OS X." That's a confusing claim, since both features are supported in Finale's competitor,
Sibelius. There's also nothing to address ongoing performance complaints. Despite these factors, though, this is clearly a must-have download. MakeMusic has a
PDF file with all the changes.