It’s Halloween Week on Unsung, where we’re sharing scary, spooky, and creepy stories.

There aren’t very many YouTube videos that talk about user interfaces of specific programs. I shared one long ago covering the Apple Music app, and this review by Tantacrul (a.k.a. Martin Keary) of music notation software Finale is so much better and more fun, and I wish there were more like it:

It’s not just a cutting critique of the user interface of a badly-aged app. It’s also a great introduction to the whole space, and a thought-provoking case study that goes beyond just UI, but also into business context and market changes. (Finale was released in 1988 and discontinued in 2024.)

While I would love to see productions like this for other niches (Blender! CAD! screenwriting software! design tools…?), this video already feels like a must watch to anyone working on complex software – even if it’s far away from music. It is a cautionary tale, and it covers the issues of an aging codebase, complexity, evolving system conventions, user habits, deferred maintenance, plugin ecosystems, innovator’s dilemma, and so on. It will make you think.

From the beginning of the video:

I want to look at how Finale got started, what was happening behind the scenes and how it got swept away due to larger external forces that its creators could not have predicted. And ultimately, how, when the writing was on the wall – when it was clear that big improvements were needed – it found itself stuck, unable to change. This is a case study in how creative software dies.

The video itself is also more creative than you might expect. As a matter of fact, toward the end, it can get a little… unhinged. You’ll know when that happens.

And that seems like a perfect transition into Halloween Week on Unsung! Let’s spend an entire week talking about scary and weird stories. It’s going to be fun!