Sibelius is unusable on Mac
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 5:56 pm
Hi,
I've been using Sibelius since version 4. I've always been a Mac user. Back in the Sibelius 7 days Sibelius got so slow and sluggish on Mac OS I switched to Windows. It works way faster on Windows and I have been using it quite happily like that for a few years.
I recently switched back to the Mac ecosystem for other reasons, only to find that even now, about 4 years later on Sibelius 8.5, things have not improved one. single. bit.
Scrolling through orchestral scores is an absolute nightmare and inputting notes lags behind with about a second. Matters get worse the larger I make the Sibelius window and easen when I make it small, which is of course not usable either.
Audio playback is perfectly fine however, not a single problem there.
My hardware isn't the problem either; I'm running a recent Macbook Pro with dedicated AMD graphics, 16GB of RAM and an i7 processor and I'm also running a Mac Pro with a 6-core CPU, dual GPU's and 32GB of ram.
To make it even more obvious how flawed the Mac version of Sibelius really is: it runs even worse on the Mac Pro, which is way more powerful than the Macbook Pro. This is probably due the Mac Pro being connected to a 4K monitor whereas the Macbook Pro uses the built in display.
I'd love to hear if there are any plans for optimizing the Sibelius experience on Mac, or if there's any setting I'm missing (I already tried disabling font smoothing). Sibelius is seriously handicapped on Mac OS, neigh; unusable. I literally have to dual boot Windows on my Macs just to be able to properly use Sibelius which is of course is crippling to my workflow. Are there any plans for Sibelius to go use the new Metal framework, or at least have the GPU accelerate the visual appearance of scores?
I'd hate to leave Sibelius behind. I tried both Finale and Dorico in the past but neither of them offered me the workflow I'm used to with Sibelius, before it became unusable of course.
I've been using Sibelius since version 4. I've always been a Mac user. Back in the Sibelius 7 days Sibelius got so slow and sluggish on Mac OS I switched to Windows. It works way faster on Windows and I have been using it quite happily like that for a few years.
I recently switched back to the Mac ecosystem for other reasons, only to find that even now, about 4 years later on Sibelius 8.5, things have not improved one. single. bit.
Scrolling through orchestral scores is an absolute nightmare and inputting notes lags behind with about a second. Matters get worse the larger I make the Sibelius window and easen when I make it small, which is of course not usable either.
Audio playback is perfectly fine however, not a single problem there.
My hardware isn't the problem either; I'm running a recent Macbook Pro with dedicated AMD graphics, 16GB of RAM and an i7 processor and I'm also running a Mac Pro with a 6-core CPU, dual GPU's and 32GB of ram.
To make it even more obvious how flawed the Mac version of Sibelius really is: it runs even worse on the Mac Pro, which is way more powerful than the Macbook Pro. This is probably due the Mac Pro being connected to a 4K monitor whereas the Macbook Pro uses the built in display.
I'd love to hear if there are any plans for optimizing the Sibelius experience on Mac, or if there's any setting I'm missing (I already tried disabling font smoothing). Sibelius is seriously handicapped on Mac OS, neigh; unusable. I literally have to dual boot Windows on my Macs just to be able to properly use Sibelius which is of course is crippling to my workflow. Are there any plans for Sibelius to go use the new Metal framework, or at least have the GPU accelerate the visual appearance of scores?
I'd hate to leave Sibelius behind. I tried both Finale and Dorico in the past but neither of them offered me the workflow I'm used to with Sibelius, before it became unusable of course.