MakeMusic has released Finale 2009a, a free, downloadable, maintenance update for registered Finale 2009 users for Windows and Mac OS X.

Changes:

• Many more time-saving enhancements to the entry of expressions, including Staff Assignment Lists, an expanded category designer, layer assignment improvements, more Score Lists (formerly "Staff Lists") and additional powerful timesaving keystrokes.
• Ambience Reverb is now included for Intel-based Macs, offering advanced control over great–sounding reverb. Macintosh playback problems, where users of specific audio interfaces only heard the left channel, have been resolved.
• SmartScore Lite Scanning Improvements – Support for triplet recognition and improved results when scanning polyphonic music.
• Improved Cross-Platform Font Handling. If you share Finale files between Mac and Windows computers, you've probably been puzzled by "MacSymbolFonts.txt" messages. Never again. Now Finale makes intelligent decisions for you AND offers better control if you need it.
• Improved placement of articulations. Fermatas and other articulations entered on a rest will automatically center correctly.
• Clearing Staff Styles is Now Easier. With the Staff Tool selected, press the Clear or Backspace key to clear any existing Staff Style in the selected region, and press the same key twice to clear the music.
• Graphic Export Settings are now preserved between Finale sessions.
• The appearance of Finale's interface in Windows Vista has been updated.
• Dozens of other improvements, including the playback of slurs, Human Playback, Cautionary Accidentals, EPS and PostScript output, and much more.