News

iTunes 12.7

| News

Last week Apple released iTunes 12.7 which removes the iOS App Store entirely and has caused some concern and confusion, especially as this change relates to the File Sharing panel—something many forScore users rely on. This panel has not been removed with iTunes 12.7, and in fact is even easier to access.

Previously, accessing this panel involved connecting your device, clicking on its icon in the navigation bar near the top of the screen, then choosing “Apps” from the sidebar. This is where people generally got confused, because this “Apps” section handled installing or uninstalling apps, rearranging your home screen, and included the File Sharing panel hidden all the way at the bottom of that complex page.

With iTunes 12.7, the ability to install, remove, update and rearrange apps has been removed—this can all be handled more easily on your device. Now, instead of the “Apps” section in the sidebar, there’s a “File Sharing” section that is dedicated to the file sharing panel. This panel works exactly the same way as it always has, so everything should be familiar to our users. No need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and fight with iTunes’ many nested scrolling views, just click and proceed as you always have.

iOS 11 Compatibility

| News

With the release of iOS 11 just around the corner, many of you may be wondering whether or not it’s safe to install. As we said last year with iOS 10, the short answer is this: if you have a recent, complete manual backup of your library and you don’t depend on forScore professionally, then go ahead and update whenever you’re ready.

The longer answer is that major updates always bring tons of big changes, from new features to behind-the-scenes refactoring that can cause all sorts of unforeseen issues (in addition to the known issues listed below). In fact, the final version Apple releases to customers will be different from any version we’ve been able to test since the first beta back in June. So whether or not you should update really comes down to this question—is there anything in iOS 11 that you need or want to try today, and could you live without forScore and your iPad for a few days? If not, wait a week and let us and others kick the tires before you jump in.

Known Issues:

Currently, there is only one bug we’re aware of that may have a meaningful impact on customers: when forScore reads a PDF page’s embedded annotations, the process of identifying links to other pages takes far longer on iOS 11 than with previous versions of iOS. This means that files with lots of links in them, especially longer files, may take noticeably longer to load or crash before finishing. If you use files with links and/or pages numbering in the hundreds, you should wait to update or disable hyperlinks in the “PDF Annotations” section of forScore’s settings panel. Unless Apple fixes this problem with a future update, working around this bug will require us to make a significant number of changes to our code and we want to be sure that they’re fully tested before we release them, so they’ll be included in a future forScore update and not the forthcoming 10.3 release.

Sneak Peek: forScore 10.3

| News

We’ve been hard at work since the announcement of iOS 11, and today we’re tremendously excited to be back with another big update to forScore, version 10.3. With this new version we’ve gone all in with iOS 11’s biggest features, fully embracing things like Drag and Drop by weaving support for it into the app at every level. The amount of flexibility this adds is incredible, and you really have to use it to believe it.

Of course, that’s just the start, so be sure to visit our new in-depth page to see all of the changes we’re making. If you’re interested in helping us get it ready for a full release consider becoming a beta tester. Otherwise, stay tuned over the coming weeks as we get closer to 10.3’s official introduction!

Groups Discontinued

| In Depth, News

In 2015 we introduced Groups, a subscription-based service that allowed forScore users to automatically share their scores, bookmarks, and setlists with other forScore users. It was new territory for us, and although we are very proud of the hard work we did to make it a reality, today we’re announcing that it is being discontinued. Functionality remains for anyone who has already signed up, and will remain until their subscription expires, but new subscriptions and extensions can no longer be purchased.

Groups was built using Apple’s CloudKit (despite the fact that it was very new at the time) because it was Apple’s first cloud service that allowed users to share information with each other. Until that point, Apple’s services were limited to backups and private synchronization between a single user’s devices. With CloudKit, we could allow users to share their information with anyone who had an iCloud account—there was no need for us to manage accounts or maintain our own servers.

Unfortunately, the ability to share information this way came at a cost: just like each user has a limited amount of iCloud storage space, apps that take advantage of this public space face usage restrictions and complicated quotas. These quotas dictate how much storage space an app has to work with, but also how much data they can move to and from CloudKit. These limits aren’t fixed, either, and they grow based on the number of active users an app has. For almost a year after Apple introduced CloudKit, even they didn’t seem to know how much they would charge for apps that exceeded these limits. We found ourselves in a frustrating limbo, but we believed enough in the end result to keep pushing forward.

In the end, the potential risks and constant maintenance of such a complex system couldn’t be reconciled with the costs and limits our users could accept. We’re tremendously proud of the concept and the implementation, but it wasn’t enough and we’re ready to move forward with the new features and enhancements that will have a big impact on all of our customers. We strive always to make forScore the best it can be, and sometimes that means closing the door on something that never quite clicked. For all of our users who tried the Groups service, we sincerely appreciate it. Thank you for giving it a shot, we learned a lot and will carry that experience forward into the hard work we continue to do every day.

forScore 10.2

| News

Today we’re extremely proud to announce the release of forScore 10.2 and forScore mini 3.2 on the App Store. These big updates introduce some incredible new features like Templates, Indexes, and Dual Page mode, but they also include key improvements to several of forScore’s most popular tools.

There’s too much to list here, so be sure to check out our feature page on everything that’s new in 10.2 if you haven’t had a chance to do so already. It’s a jam-packed update that we’ve worked very hard to put together, and we think the end results will speak for themselves and really kick things up a notch.

As always, these updates are completely free for all existing users so visit the App Store today to get your hands on them. Thanks as always to our beta testers for lending us their time and providing valuable feedback, and thanks to all of our customers for your continued support and passion. We couldn’t do it without you.


forScore 10.2

Available now for iPad


forScore mini 3.2

Available now for iPhone and iPod Touch

Cue 1.4

| News

We’re very excited to announce the immediate availability of Cue 1.4, the latest update to our standalone remote control app. This update includes some helpful improvements and fixes, but the big news is the addition of Dual Page mode, a new feature that lets you view two pages of a score on two separate devices using Cue with forScore 10.2 or forScore mini 3.2.

Cue not only retrieves and displays the second page (complete with read-only annotations), it also displays fully interactive links and buttons so you can work with your score naturally on both devices. You can even tap or swipe to turn pages from Cue, so you don’t have to worry about which screen you’re reaching for while you play.

It’s an amazing new feature you really have to try to appreciate. Cue 1.4 requires iOS 8 or newer, and it’s available now on the App Store as a free update for all existing users or just $1.99 (USD) for everyone else.


forScore Cue

Available now for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch on the App Store.


forScore Music Box

Get our four utility apps or complete your collection with this app bundle.

Nocturne 1.0

| News

We’re very proud to announce the immediate availability of Nocturne 1.0 on the App Store. This new app—our first that’s completely independent from our work on forScore and its utilities—is the product of our own needs and our passion to create the best possible environment for capturing musical ideas as they happen.

We think it’s going to be a big help to a lot of musicians, so we’re pricing it aggressively to get the word out: Nocturne is available for just $1.99 (USD) and there are no in-app purchases, so head over to the App Store now to check it out!


Nocturne

Available now for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch on the App Store.

Announcing Nocturne

| News

Today we’re very excited and proud to announce something brand new: our first app that’s completely separate from our work with forScore. We call it Nocturne, and it’s a single-track MIDI recorder that’s designed to make recording several takes of your song as quick and straightforward as possible. Our new detail page has much more information, so be sure to check it out.

We’ve actually been working on Nocturne off and on for over two years because it was an app we wanted for ourselves. A few iOS bugs kept us from finishing it until now, but we think it’s finally in the right place and we need beta testers to help us get it all the way to the finish line. If you have a MIDI controller (and a compatible adapter or interface, if necessary), consider helping us out by trying it and telling us what you think.

If you’re interested, sign up here to become a beta tester. Otherwise, stay tuned right here or use our RSS feed to follow our latest news as we get closer to releasing Nocturne on the app store!

Sneak Peek: forScore 10.2

| News

We’ve been hard at work, and today we’re tremendously excited to be unveiling the latest update to forScore, version 10.2. Beginning last year with the debut of forScore 10 and the big foundational improvements it introduced, we made the deliberate choice to continue building on it for a while and let the point releases serve a much bigger role. We kicked things off with 10.1 late last year, but 10.2 takes things up a notch. The feature list could’ve easily added up to an 11.0, but we’re sticking with our plan and pushing forward aggressively. Our mission—to make forScore the best sheet music reader it can be—won’t fulfill itself, after all.

There’s too much to cover here, so be sure to head over to our new in-depth page explaining most of the big changes. And, if you’re interested in helping us get it ready for a full release consider becoming a beta tester. We can’t do it without you, so thanks as always for your support, your enthusiasm, and your music.

iOS 10.3 Beta

| News

Note: The specific issues in this article have been resolved, but this information applies equally to any current or future beta releases.

Last week Apple released iOS 10.3 public beta 2, causing forScore and forScore mini to immediately crash on launch. Most people don’t run beta versions and didn’t encounter this issue, but for those who did we wanted to take a moment to discuss what happened and how to avoid it in the future.

First and foremost, iOS 10.3 is an unfinished, pre-release beta version. It’s not the latest version of iOS (that’s iOS 10.2.1), and it’s by definition a buggy mess. If you have it on your device and you’re not a developer or an Apple employee, it’s because you joined Apple’s public beta program at some point (you can unenroll here). This process is full of explicit, repetitive warnings, so there’s no way you can sign up accidentally.

These betas exist to give developers time to get their software ready, and the beta period is typically many weeks or months long. It’s meant to expose issues so that they can be corrected by the time Apple releases the update worldwide. Sometimes these issues are just plain bugs, and other times they’re purposeful changes that we need time to adapt to.

We cannot provide a bug- or crash-free experience if you’re using these betas. Even when we are able to create an immediate fix, Apple’s review process means it can take days or even weeks for that release to get to our customers (sometimes by then the iOS bug has already been fixed with a new beta version). More importantly, it pulls resources away from the work that benefits all of our customers and creates opportunities for instability and errors.

There are plenty of reasons why people choose to run iOS betas. As long as you know what that entails, then we sincerely appreciate and applaud your willingness to help make iOS (and forScore) better for everyone. If, on the other hand, you didn’t expect and can’t accommodate these kinds of bugs, please reconsider being a part of this program.

We are absolutely committed to providing the best possible experience for our users on all supported versions of iOS—that will include iOS 10.3 just as soon as it’s finished. Until then, know that we hear you and we’re still working incredibly hard to make forScore the best app it can be.