This week we released forScore 10.4 and forScore mini 3.4, bringing some exciting new and updated features for us to explore. We’re starting today with a big one: Musicnotes integration.
While forScore gives you a wide range of capabilities and is designed to be as efficient as possible, the bottom line is that your experience with forScore depends heavily on the quality of your content. The less work you have to do to accommodate crooked scans in large image-based files, the better forScore performs. Digitally-created files are best, providing high-quality representations of music with tiny file sizes. They’re much easier for iOS to display, so pages load faster and use less battery power.
That’s why we were so excited when Musicnotes, the world’s largest distributor of digital sheet music, came to us and proposed allowing forScore users to connect to their Musicnotes accounts and download their purchases as standard PDF files. That’s exactly what we did, and now forScore’s Services panel gives you access to both Cloud Services (things like Dropbox and Box) and Content Providers (Musicnotes). Just tap on the Musicnotes item in the list and sign in to see your purchase history. Tap any item to download it, or tap “edit” and select multiple pieces to download at once or to download and add to any of your setlists.
There are no extra steps, no settings to change, and no additional fees. Whether you’ve already built up a long list of purchases or you’re just starting out, Musicnotes offers hundreds of thousands of arrangements, opening up a whole new world of premium content to our users. Best of all, these are fully licensed and you don’t have to worry about the legal gray areas of copyright law.
We want everyone to have access to great content, and we’re extremely grateful to Musicnotes for taking this big step with us. If you’re looking for something new to play and want to support us and all of the people behind the music, be sure to check out Musicnotes.com.
This week we released forScore 10.4 and forScore mini 3.4, and these updates bring some important changes to our apps that we wanted to take a few minutes to underscore.
In-Place Editing
Throughout most of forScore’s history, sharing files using iOS’ “open in” function has worked one way: it duplicated your file and sent a new copy to the receiving app. Any changes that app made to the file were only reflected within that app, and the original file remained untouched in forScore.
With forScore 10.4 and forScore mini 3.4, that’s changing slightly. With these updates our apps integrate more closely with iOS 11’s Files app which has a few important implications. First, you can now view all of forScore’s documents through the Files app, and any changes you make to forScore’s documents directory within the Files app will be permanently made to forScore (just like they currently are when you use iTunes’ file sharing panel). Next, and more importantly, sharing files with other apps may now give them read/write access to those files.
We’ve put together a page that outlines how all of this works and what you can expect if you use an app that supports in-place editing, so be sure to check it out when you have a few minutes. These changes give you far more flexibility in how you work, and as long as you understand the implications of them they’re incredibly helpful and exciting.
Legacy Features
The best way for new users to learn what forScore can do is for them to add some content and then explore on their own. We encourage this because we design forScore to be as approachable as possible from the start, organizing more complex tools into a clear hierarchy so that more focused, precise capabilities open up to people only once they need them.
Our apps also serve a wide range of musicians, some of whom are new to the latest version on the most powerful hardware, and others who are still relying on their trusty iPad 2 and expect the app to work the way it always has. We know how important it is to be able to rely on a familiar workflow, so we preserve functionality whenever possible while updating for each new version of iOS and each iteration of iPad.
These two goals can sometimes be at odds, however, and new users sometimes learn to rely on these older features instead of taking advantage of their modern replacements. So with forScore 10.4 and forScore mini 3.4 we’re hiding certain features by default and discouraging their use. Things like the original TV Output mode that was designed for the iPad 1, WebDAV and FTP support in the Services panel, and the Bluetooth panel are being retired in favor of iOS-level features like AirPlay screen mirroring, the Files app, and AirDrop.
If you use one of these features, it’s important to know that they aren’t being removed yet (if at all), so if you still rely on them you can use the “Legacy Settings” section of forScore’s settings panel to re-enable them. Our goal is to make forScore more approachable for new users by removing things they generally don’t need.
Each year a new version of iOS brings new capabilities to the iPad and, by extension, apps like ours. These changes always take a little bit of time to get comfortable with (some more than others) but in the end we think they will help move our apps forward and give you the tools you need to work smarter and faster than ever before.
Today we’re very excited to announce the release of our latest big updates, forScore 10.4 and forScore mini 3.4 on the App Store. These versions include some big new features like annotation layers and significant improvements to tools like Dashboard, but the biggest story is our integration with Musicnotes.com.
Since we launched version 1.0, it has been obvious to us that the biggest influence on each user’s experience with forScore is the content they use. We can add dozens of features, improve overall efficiency, and augment music with conveniences and display tweaks, but at the end of the day we just can’t fix bad PDF files. Having great content is key, and we want to do whatever we can to make sure every musician has access to the songs they need in a format that works for them.
That’s why we were thrilled when Musicnotes approached us and why we’ve worked with them over the past few months to bring their high quality, fully-licensed content to you. Purchases you make (or already made in the past) through their website can now be downloaded directly into forScore through our Services panel, giving you unprecedented access to digital sheet music without sacrificing the tools and workflow you’re used to.
There’s a lot more to these updates, though, so head over to our feature page on everything that’s new in 10.4 if you haven’t had a chance to do so already. These updates are completely free for all existing users, as always, and only made possible by the hard work of our beta testers and the tireless support and passion of our customers. We couldn’t do it without you.
Available now for iPad
Available now for iPhone and iPod Touch
We’ve covered a lot of features in this series, and the most important part about the things we discuss here is the fact that everyone can use them. Aside from any hardware limitations, everyone who buys forScore gets the same features thanks to our policy of providing free updates for life. That’s a promise we made back in 2010 when we first introduced our sheet music reader and we’ve never looked back (even while other apps are moving to subscription models and building a laundry list of paid add-ons).
Back at version 1.0, forScore really was more of a concept than a complete solution, but with the support of our customers we were able to release over a hundred updates that took the idea from a rough vision to a complex and powerful set of tools that musicians all over the world rely on every day. Early adopters really deserve a huge amount of credit for paving the road we’ve traveled.
That enthusiasm never waned, and some people over the years consistently asked for ways they could choose to support forScore beyond their original purchase. After watching us grow and add a huge number of new features and enhancements, they wanted to do more to help. So last year we introduced voluntary upgrades, a way for people to support us by choosing to use in-app purchases to make up the difference between forScore’s lower price in previous years and its current price.
As a thank you to users who opt to support us in this way, we unlock the ability for them to change the app’s icon. It’s a fun tweak that we hope shows our gratitude and lets our customers share our pride in the app they helped to create.
If you want to learn more about voluntary upgrades, be sure to check out this news post which covers them in even greater detail.
We’re working hard to finish forScore 10.4, so today we’re taking a quick look at a useful but often misunderstood iOS feature: the Battery Usage screen. These usage statistics are found in iOS’ Settings app (in the Battery section) and they show all of the apps that have been used in the last 24 hours or 7 days.
Where people generally get confused is that the numbers shown here are percentages of the total power used, not percentages of your total battery’s capacity. If you start the day with a full battery and end with 80% remaining, then an app’s 50% reading means that it was responsible for half of the power consumed, or just 10% of your total battery’s capacity.
In other words, these percentages are highly relative. If you use an app a lot you can expect to see a higher percentage of usage. If an app’s usage seems higher than it should be for how much you use it, it may be operating in the background or could simply be managing resources poorly.
If you want to learn more about this panel, Apple’s knowledge base article offers a few additional details to help you understand how this information can be useful.
