Update: iOS Crashes

When Apple released iOS and iPadOS 13.4 back in April they introduced a serious bug that has been causing major issues ever since. If you recently saw forScore launch to a white screen and remain unresponsive for an extended period of time, that was likely this bug. We’ve worked hard to get Apple to acknowledge and resolve this issue, but it persists.

In June, Apple told us they’d fixed it with iOS and iPadOS 14 and that no further feedback from us would be acted upon. We knew those major updates were still months away, so we created a workaround but made it opt-in due to significant limitations it imposes on audio playback. Meanwhile, as we finished forScore 12, we disabled this workaround for iOS 14 users since we fully expected that Apple’s fix would be the end of it. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to have been the case and we’ve had to put the workaround back in with forScore 12.0.2.

We don’t know if this is the same bug or if it’s a separate issue that exhibits the same symptoms, but we again cannot stand by and let these crashes go on—we’ve spent years building the trust of musicians everywhere and we will not let that trust continue to erode while we wait for Apple to deal with this bug at their own pace.

Since we don’t have any idea when this will actually be resolved, we’ve taken additional measures with forScore 12.0.2: if you haven’t enabled our workaround and you experience this crash, it’ll kick in automatically the next time you launch forScore. It doesn’t change your settings so the app may crash again if you relaunch it (not to be confused with closing and reopening it), but this at least ensures that you can access your music no matter what.

This isn’t how we want to be spending our energy, and it’s not the kind of experience you expect from us. You shouldn’t have to know about any of this, but we’re running out of alternatives. Our customers are our highest priority and our relationship with Apple is non-negotiable, so we have to find a balanced way forward. We will continue to communicate with you, work hard for you, and push on with everything we’ve got. Thank you as always for your patience, support, and understanding.

Face Gestures

Last week Apple unveiled two new iPad models—the 8th generation iPad (released last Friday) and 4th generation iPad Air (coming next month). Based on Apple’s technical specifications for these devices and a few user reports, we believe that the 8th generation supports forScore Pro’s Face Gestures but the new iPad Air will not.

Face Gestures are built using Apple’s Vision framework which, until last week, only provided face tracking features on devices with the TrueDepth camera system—we assumed that its unique hardware provided the data necessary for implementing this feature. Clearly that has since changed with the release of iOS and iPadOS 14.

We don’t know anything about how this works under the hood, how accurate face tracking is without the advanced TrueDepth components, or why the forthcoming iPad Air won’t support it (especially given that it costs almost twice as much), but we’re very happy to see one of forScore’s most innovative features come to Apple’s most affordable iPad.

Conservation

forScore is made in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, a region currently blanketed in smoke from an overwhelming number of wildfires burning across the continent. Over the past ten days, we’ve been choked with a thick fog-like haze that has brought unprecedentedly unhealthy conditions to areas typically known for their lush, evergreen foliage. It’s summertime and we haven’t seen the sun in over a week.

Protecting our environment is a daunting task and any gains made by using forScore and saving paper are easily overtaken by the energy and chemicals required to manufacture and use consumer electronics like an iPad. But this context is helpful to understanding why we take something seemingly unimportant so seriously: the download size of our app.

These days apps can clock in at around 150MB and nobody gives it a second thought. Add to that the forced release cycles of companies that “regularly update our app to provide the best possible experience” and have you re-download that same data over and over again even when there’s nothing new, and you can see how it piles up.

We just released forScore 12 which is roughly 35% smaller than the previous version, just over 15MB on average (app size varies by device). That’s something we’re incredibly proud of. Our app is complex and full of rich features, but we write most of that code ourselves. When we ship third-party frameworks, it’s to provide features like direct support for certain page turning devices—something that clearly benefits users. We absolutely never include any sort of analytics libraries; on the rare occasion we need information from a user to address a specific issue, we give them the ability and choice to share that with us or not.

Every update we release is downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. Moving that data around takes energy—energy that comes from a variety of sources. It’s a tiny part of the world’s carbon footprint, but it matters. Keeping our app as small as possible forces us to always consider whether the choices we make are worth the cost or not. It also makes for faster updates and more available space on your device.

The past eight months have challenged us all and, as the view from here can attest, things aren’t going to just get better on their own. Times like these fortify our beliefs and values, and this is just a tiny part of what we believe in as a company. The rest we’ll continue to foster and build through discipline and passion. May we all see clearer skies soon.

forScore 12

Today we’re very happy to announce the release of forScore 12, available immediately on iOS and iPadOS as a free update for all users. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to check out our update page to learn all about it. It’s a huge update on its own, but of course that’s only the beginning—forScore 12 will be coming to the Mac this fall once Apple releases their next big update to macOS.

Thanks once again to our incredible beta testers who helped us get this major update ready, and to all of our customers for your support—it’s more important this year than ever before, and we can’t thank you enough.

forScore 12

Available now for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch

Apple’s Fall Updates

Each year we pride ourselves on providing optimized versions of our apps on or very near day one for each major OS update. We spend all summer working with beta versions and put a great deal of energy into ensuring that our customers have the best possible experience as soon as they’re ready to update.

Yesterday, however, Apple announced that most of this year’s updates would be released this morning. Developers were given less than 20 hours to download the finalized tools, check their apps for any bugs resulting from last-minute changes in Apple’s SDKs, and submit their apps for review (which can take anywhere from a few hours to a week or more).

Although we spent months getting ready for these updates and we’re very excited to provide our latest free update to all forScore users, Apple prohibited developers from submitting their changes until yesterday afternoon. As a result, we won’t be able to provide day-one support this year and our customers will have to wait to take advantage of the tremendous amount of work we’ve done.

Fortunately, we’re not aware of any major issues with forScore 11.2.6 running on iOS or iPadOS 14, nor are we aware of any issues with our other apps. Our recommendation in years past has been to update when you’re ready, but to consider waiting a few days or weeks if you can for any major issues to get worked out.

This year is different, though, since we’re still reeling from a significant bug in iOS and iPadOS 13.4-13.7 that Apple says has now been fixed. We still advise customers to at least consider holding off for a short while just in case something isn’t working as expected, but if you’ve been experiencing those crashes updating may be far less risky than remaining on iOS 13.

Things move very quickly this time of year, and hopefully we’ll have lots of great news to share and celebrate very soon. For now, thanks for your support and understanding.