Everybody who gets into music notation/composing knows Finale. It's the quasi industry standard, in its segment challenged only by Sibelius. I use both apps (and some other, more specialised software), and both have their positive and negative points.

I think the key for using Finale well, you have to make your own templates, and find your own workflow. That takes time, as Finale allows for more customisation than any other app in this field, it is very versatile; many give up on it during this process, but once you have "set up" the app for you and your needs, Finale shows its strengths. The core of this app is brilliant, I love entering notes real time by MIDI-keyboard (if you're not very good at it, you can first tap the rhythm with the hyperscribe-tool and then the correct pitches with the repitch-tool), the "engine" for those things is very good. Anyway the input-methods are great, if you do composing, the speedy entry (with MIDI-keyboard) is fantastic (you can play/try your music at the keyboard and Finale will only write down when you type together the rhythmic values). And yes, this app can create really beautiful professional scores – the point here is that you can really make your own, individually styled scores – nobody will see what app you have used for it. The web is full with plug-ins and additional fonts for Finale, so you have lots of possibilities to make your scores look personal. If you want to write avant-garde music, with advanced new notation, you nearly *have to* go with Finale – the only other app I can imagine for this is NoteAbilityPro. So, if you want to seriously get into music notation/composing and you want to invest time and money in your scores, Finale is a good choice.

If you're a music teacher or student and want to write some etudes or compose something from time to time, then I'd recommend MuseScore. You can try with Finale, but probably you won't get happy with it. I mean, if you just use Finale's default templates, you won't be really creating professional-looking scores (for example, the default font of Finale is Times New Roman :-) and you will still use a lot of time learning it. The best, but also the WORST looking sheet music I have ever seen was made with Finale.

If you do composing with more traditional notation (film music, pop music, most of the classical repertoire) I'd have a look at Notion. It has muuuch better sounds than Finale (or any other notation app), which is great if you do orchestration. It is easy to use and also has a good iPad app. Version 4 is just out, but no demo yet. Maybe also interesting for music teachers.

No, I haven't forgotten Sibelius: great for quickly making professionally looking scores (with beautiful fonts), only little learning curve. Good input methods, stable app, aimed more at traditional notation, but still flexible enough for most music. Actually a great app, however given the current situation with Avid, I wouldn't invest time and money in it at this point (for further details see my comment at MacUpdate's Sibelius page).

Back to Finale: there are negative points. The complexity of Finale, that is often attributed to its rich feature set, is in my opinion to a large percentage caused from poor design. I am really sorry to say it: the whole UI feels like a gigantic workaround. OK, there have been improvements, Finale is much easier to learn then it was 10 years ago, but basically, the interface in its core hasn't kept up with the addition of new features and basically remained the same for the last 20 years. There have been only small steps of progress to improve the interface, like in Finale 2012 the new Score Manager – still, these attempts are only half-hearted and make the user experience sometimes even more inconsistent. People claim "you can do everything with Finale" – well, yes, if you like tinkering. Because actually, Finale does have its limitations (and not only for very specialised stuff); but if you know how, you can overcome those with workarounds; and since Finale has great support, useful forums and tutorials, and (most importantly:) a huge user base, it's quite possible that you will find solutions quickly and easily.

But: a whole different problem is that the developer has adopted this "workaround"-style as the basic design concept of the app; this way the developer doesn't have to work on good UI design. It's like a bleeding arm covered with tiny pieces of band-aid, and as soon as there is some blood showing, one is putting another tiny patch on top of it. I feel there is only little will to improve Finale in this regard (keep in mind there is also a sort of "Finale-help-market", with many people earning money by giving workshops, seminars, classes of "how to learn Finale"). It's funny, if you don't know where to find or how to change something, don't even try – check the manual or Google: otherwise you will never find it. For us Mac users that feels strange, as we are used to well designed software, where you can find solutions by thinking logically. But well, don't try that with Finale, you'll just waste time…

Resulting from that developer's mindset, the updates are often disappointing. Some of the new features are just beta-style implemented, often just new workarounds… Bugs don't get fixed, etc. etc. etc. At least, MakeMusic has changed its policy of throwing each year a new version on the market. But in the meantime I have given up hope for any major improvements, because somehow everybody who is still with Finale has arranged him/herself with the app and can live with it.

Well then, is Finale worth the $600? To be honest, I don't think many users have paid that much for the app. Most of us got it from an institution or with educational discount, or through a competitive upgrade. I mean, if you buy Notion 4 (now on sale for about 60$), you get Finale for 130$. And maybe you stick with Notion anyway… And well, there is some $50-hardware (M-Audio mini-MIDI-keyboard for example) that have an older version of Sibelius included, with which you qualify for a competitive upgrade of Finale too. So if you have time, I would recommend to look for a good deal, can save you a lot of money. I'd recommend NOT to use any of the "smaller" versions of Finale, like "Allegro" or "PrintMusic" or whatever. Since you will almost certainly need to google to get some help using Finale, and many useful (some even necessary) workarounds and also tutorials etc. probably won't work with one of the "little" versions.

As a new Finale user, I found the 2012 Finale to be quite useable. Good training videos, and I was up speed quickly.

... so, I switched from Sibelius to Finale. The tipping point for me was that Finale can export to MusiciXML versions 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 and better MusicXML imports (in my test). Sibelius only exports MusicXML 2.0.

I use MusicXML exports for SeeScore on the iPad.

As an adjunct to Finale, I use Harmony Assistant create midi with lyrics like the karaoke *.kar format files. and rich midi files for transport to Logic Pro and MainStage. (I've not yet found a way for Finale to put lyrics in the Finale generated midi file)

Finale has a very, very steep learning curve; it has irritating bugs that have been there for a long time and are not yet fixed; it relies too much on the user's own inventiveness in creating workarounds; some of its modules are clumsy; its help section is immense in its size - and very confusing. It is all true.
But what is also true is this. I have been using it heavily since 1994 to create a variety of scores - including graphics driven experimental ones - and during that time it crashed twice (yes, twice). Not bad, right? It makes it one crash per seven and a half years. I would like to see another Mac programme which is so sturdy. Finale offers unmatched flexibility in terms of advanced notations, MIDI manipulation and the like. It is very highly customisable - you can focus on some modules only, those which you know you will use. The other modules are always out of your way unless you need them. Once you've mastered it, Finale is a delight, many of its plug-ins saving the conscious user dozens of hours of potentially crippling, time-consuming work.
Finale is not perfect and never will be, but it is nonetheless way ahead of its competitors in terms of the sheer number of options it gives the user.

As a long time Finale user I've learned over the years that it's not necessary to upgrade to every single yearly version. If you're happy with your current version then don't bother to upgrade. This pretty much goes for any software in general.

However, for people to constantly put Finale down because they charge for their commitment to the product, in making it the absolute best notation program on the market, is simply outrageous.

Sibelius is great if you're a student or beginner, but nothing holds a candle to Finale for precise music notation. Sibelius simply produces sloppy scores. If you're a serious composer Finale is the ultimate tool.

Isn't an update from 2004 to 2005 supposed to be a "major update" ? I mean, the two versions of the program look preatty much the same, except for a couple of functions that you don't even notice....Very disappointing. The last version of Sibelius is absolutely on a way higher level, from any point of view.

Finale 2009 is a pretty significant regression from 2007 in that it won't even install if you use a case-sensitive HFS+ volume as your boot volume. The installer just sits there and does nothing when you click install.

I've posted a detailed list of Finale bugs (including some specific to case-sensitive HFS+) with workarounds over on VersionTracker, along with many other bugs for which no workaround is possible. Here's an abbreviated list:

0. Installer fails to work.

Workaround: In Terminal, type:

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Installer.app
ln -s Contents contents
cd Contents/MacOS/
ln -s Installer installer

1. Finale repeatedly asks if you want to check for updates.

Workaround: In Terminal, type:

sudo chmod g+w /Library/Preferences

Next, run Finale and tell it whether to check for updates. Finally, in Terminal, type:

chmod g-w /Library/Preferences

2. Finale (since at least 2007) spews a bunch of warnings from the shell when it loads plug-ins.

sh: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
sh: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

No known workaround, possibly harmless?

3. Finale installs 326 files with the execute bits set to true. Of these, probably only one (the main Finale binary) should be executable.

4. Finale help index won't open.

Workaround: In Terminal, type:

cd /Applications/
cd "Finale 2009"
cd "Help Files"
ln -s Finale_CSH.htm Finale_csh.htm

5. Very high CPU overhead and poor battery life. Basically, they keep their Core Audio worker thread running and providing audio data continuously even when no documents are open (much less playing). The result is 8-9% of the CPU wasted while the application is idle. This translates to a significant reduction in battery life on portables.

Workaround: Always quit Finale when not in use and carry a spare battery.