Software updates are often blockbuster events, but sometimes they are smaller affairs that just make working in the programs appreciably better. Such is the case with the latest updates to Finale and Dorico.

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald recap the Finale v27.2 update, which featured new a jazz template and document style designed in collaboration with Darcy James Argue. We also explain why it’s important Finale is now a “universal” application for Macs, like Dorico 4 is, which means that it can run natively on Apple’s newest M1-powered machine.

We then turn our attention to the Dorico 4.0.20 update, and highlight a few of our favorite improvements in this update. We discuss why the jump bar, the seemingly low-tech text-only way of working in Dorico, might be the secret to working faster in Dorico now that it returns better search results. We also discuss improvements to Dorico’s Key Editor and look ahead to what’s already been promised to come in the next update.

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