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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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I seem to recall having seen a video that featured a different font than the very basic block letters that appear in the chord area in BIAB 2009.5. Is it possible to change that font to something ...easier on the eyes?
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Oops. Posting from work this morning and working from memory on this one. Don't have BIAB Mac available to check the differences, so the below info may only apply to the Windoze version.
If that doesn't show up as described on the Mac version, rest assured the fonts are there. I'm not liking getting old and not remembering everything as well anymore. sigh.
**********
Sure.
Inside BB, hit the Prefs button, then Display at top left of Prefs window.
"Chordsheet Font" area, where you have a dropdown choice list or just hit the Jazz Fonts button, that's my fav.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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On my mac version of 2009.5 I get a choice of three preference windows - one, two and soloist preferences. There is a dropdown choice on the 1st window but it's for "chord display type". An option to chose a different mac * font * for the "normal" chord display doesn't seem to be there. I hope you guys have one, the default block lettering for chords will not win any designer awards. Just sayin.
Last edited by bonecall; 12/05/09 05:15 AM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Well, bonecall, I'm in front of my bb for Mac with my Macbook right now, and the manual says that there is only one Font available, Truetype, that darn manual also says that the size of the single font is settable in Prefs2 -- but I can't find it there.
i agree with you.
Especially on a Mac.
Macs are supposed to be for makin' great lookin' printouts. And they are. Except when it comes to this program. That needs some fixin'...
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Well, BIAB is in a league of its own apparently. The interface is, to put it politely, unique and the look utilitarian in the extreme. I realize there must be a ton of legacy issues but at some point, like Steve Jobs did with Mac OS9, ya gotta pull the plug and come to terms with real world considerations like ease of use. In 2009 paying customers expect a modern program to interface with modern design and on that criteria BIAB is a bit of a disaster. I know a bunch of folks put off by that fact alone.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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IIRC, the Windows version uses the "MS Comic Sans" font in the chordsheet window. It's been a long time, but a friend was running BIAB 2006 on his laptop, and that's what he told me a couple of years ago.
I remember this because I looked for that font, and even installed it on my Mac, but BIAB still showed in the normal font .
I may be wrong on the name though, my memory isn't what it used to be.
It would be nice to have the ability to change the font though.
- Jay
MacPro 5,1/12 core@3.46GHz -- OS X 10.14.6 -- ATI 7970 -- 32 Gig RAM -- Crucial 500GB OS SSD -- Samsung EVO 1TB Audio/Sample SSD -- BIAB 2023 -- Logic Pro X -- Cubase Elements 11 -- Too many plugins
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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No kidding...
I recently finished a survey of 15 musician friends, asking these two questions (independent of the window/mac platform):
1. Have you tried BIAB?
2. If you tried it, do you like it?
3. If you haven't tried it, why not?
Literally, in all 15 cases, the resposes were:
"Tried it, hate the interface. Would not use it"
"Checked it out, and couldn't figure it out"
"That program was obviously written by musicians, not programmers"
"That interface is terrible"
Well, my degree and 40 years of work experience is in Math and Engineering and I can tell you from a statistics point of view, that the bell-curve clearly suggests BIAB folks are loosing a ton of business.
Once upon a time, in the engineering design world, there was a powerful program that other programs couldn't touch but, the interface was Unix based and not user friendly at all. As GIU's developed, new competitive programs with user-friendly interfaces popped up and, eventually, after loosing market share, ProE, put a nice GUI front-end on their program. Unfortunately, they did not start from scratch but, built upon old legacy. You have only to go one to two menu levels deep before being back into the old interface. ProE is no longer in high demand and the cost of their software went from $30k down to $4k and struggling to stay alive.
BIAB has some really great aspects about it but, the program really is only as good as the weakest link.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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The program may only be as good as the weakest link but its obvious that Mr Gannon and associates have calculated that they can remain with the nightmarish interface and still make money. In other words the company figures the cost of redesigning the program would not result in the increased amount of sales that would make the hassel worthwhile financially.
In other words plan on dealing with a BIAB 1983 microsoft look and feel for the foreseeable future. (sigh)
Last edited by bonecall; 12/12/09 06:23 PM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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I'll bet they can spell hassle correctly, though.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Quote:
I'll bet they can spell hassle correctly, though.
For that we should give Mr. Gannon and company a pass on the computing world's worst interface?
Nah.
You must have a lot of influence on the powers that be Mac. How about arranging for a 50 % reduction in price for a program that affronts the very idea of Apple's ease of use philosophy?
I'm surprised that Mr Jobs hasn't sent the design police up to Canada way before this.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Patience is a virtue.
If I have any influence at all, it is because I realize that one can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Well stay the course then. The rest of us have a right to comment on a product for which we forked over a fair amount of moolah (spelling?). There's another old bromide that might be applicable here as well - "Its a squeaky wheel that gets the grease."
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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9% of total market isn't even a squeak.
That is what appears to me to be our REAL problem.
Peace.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Quote:
9% of total market isn't even a squeak.
And increasing, so they say. Pete and the boyz ain't developing a Mac version because there's no future (read money) involved. If they're going to do it lets hold their feet to the fire to make sure they get it right. I got money on it, MY money, that sez they * will * get it right. They just need a little "encouragement" from time to time to make sure that they do. ;-)
Last edited by bonecall; 12/12/09 08:15 PM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Such a big spender.
Whatcha got, one license?
Purchased what, about a month ago?
And that gives you the right to post like that and you think that those are encouragements. In quotes.
This deserves a rethink, but I don't believe you will.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Quote:
Such a big spender.
Whatcha got, one license?
How many licenses should I buy Mac? And I don't know about you but a couple of hundred bucks these days ain't exactly hay. For a musician anyway.
The more I get into this program the more frustrating it becomes. At the moment despite the manual the interface is one big time sink. Compared with BIAB Finale, another complicated application with legacy issues, is a breeze. And at least with Finale the company doesn't stick you for add-ons after you buy the program. So please pardon my irritation when the folks that maintain this, this... antique, keep adding new features instead of straightening out the interface.
Just my two cents.
Or should I say my two hundred dollars. :-)
to start with it seems.
Last edited by bonecall; 12/13/09 05:32 AM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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What price have you paid for other Macintosh music programs?
I've got Sibelius here. Cost a lot mo' than two hunnert.
And you really don't want to know what Logic has cost me an' Larry to date, much less ProTools...
And of those three, Sibelius is the only one that has never crashed, frozen nor not done something it was supposed to do at some point or another.
ALL of them have their weakpoints as far as GUI, or figuring out how to implement something or other quickly. The Sibelius manual looks like a Manhattan telephone directory. And it is dwarfed by the Logic manual.
And none of them are autoaccompaniment programs.
One neat thing about Sibelius is that it came with two licenses and can install on Mac or PC from the same disks. So I could put a copy on each of the two platforms here. And really there are two nice things about Sibelius, the second being that the PC version and the Mac version are virtually identical GUI's, give or take the things that have to do with the different Operating Systems.
I think that there is a good future for the Mac version of BiaB but it will take a bit more time to have that. Development has to catch up, if there was anything done wrong it was the loooooong time languishing as BBv12 for Mac that caused this problem. They have solved that problem, lets see how they handle the updates, new vesions, etc. before throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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Gentlemen...
I didn't mean to start a negative dialog and perhaps I should have phrased my statements in a more positive way (too many years of dealing with whinny employees, I guess...).
I think that we can all agree that BIAB does have some really good and useful things about it, as well as recognizing it's down sides.
From a practical point of view (from nearly 40 years of working with marketing) it's easy for me to read the tea leaves because I see the similarities between my involvements in purchasing software (on a very large scale in excess of multiple 6 figures) and the mathematical statistics of the field of users. Including my own user experience.
As a programmer (an often needed trait for me) I know what going back to the drawing board can be in terms of a real hassle - I'm presently converting code from java to objectiveC and I can't fault the BIAB folks for hoping to minimize their costs/time. Yet, I also know (by experience) the benefit of starting from a clean sheet of paper and I hoped to encourage that by my posting - for two reasons:
1 - So it might lead to a change that users would like and not feel they have to fight it's interface
2 - So BIAB folks could reap greater rewards from an increased volume and more positive audience
And, I suppose lastly, as a geek, I have no problem debugging software and providing feedback - I just hate to have to pay hundreds of bucks to do it and then, to have to pay for an upgrade that (hopefully) fixed the bugs. That's where I draw the line - I'm comfortable with slogging through BIAB in it's current form and will not buy any upgrades nor can I recommend it to my music students.
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Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh
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As an engineer who has done a bit of QA work, I cannot qualify "fifteen friends" as being statistically significant.
However, I would not have to survey anyone at all in order to state unequivically that BiaB for Mac in its present form needs more work.
Psst. I do recommend that users who can purchase the BB for Win over BB for Mac. At least for the time being.
Matter of fact, it was a PC copy of BB, picked up used along with a keyboard and some other junk that a Grad student had to sell that made me go out and purchase the first PC ever to grace my old recording studio, way back in the fall of '98. Up until then it was all Mac. Well, the Atari which I still keep running and use from time to time (Bars 'n Pipes!)...
Today I am at home with both platforms. Never could figure out the quasi-religious wars that happen concerning that issue. As James Chandler Jr. once said on these forums, "How can ya hate a puter?"
--Mac
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I wouldn't characterize the above dialogue as negative but rather as a frank exchange of views about the serious work yet to be done to bring the BiaB Mac version up the point where it meets the standards set by most other OSX programs. As a guy who has also used both platforms I can't imagine why Mac would compare a PC to a Apple machine in terms of quality or software integration. Different strokes I guess but I think whatever the difference BiaB has a ways to go on the Mac platform to where the company should be charging serious money for what they present as their latest upgrade. I hope they consider a rigorous facelift so that when I ask the software guys I've queried in the last few weeks to look at the next update they won't hold their noses again.
Now with that out of the way I need to start trying to find a way to figure the present version out. After extensive underlining my manual now looks like a map of the NYC subway system. Intuitive a nice sounding adjective when applied to computers, doncha think?
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