Dear Apple, Justin here. Over the past thirteen years, thanks to the work you’ve done and the incredible hardware you’ve created, I’ve been able to take a simple idea (sheet music on an iPad) and turn it into one of the most successful and complex apps on the App Store. I’m proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish from the very beginning with the revolutionary iPad 1, but it’s time to let down your guard and get rid of the watchdog on iPadOS.
The watchdog policy is sensible: if a device is working hard for too long it usually indicates a problem and can lead to unresponsiveness, battery drain, and a generally unpleasant experience. This policy terminates any app caught violating these limits, which vary depending on the device. Since forScore is an app that works with user-supplied content, tasks performed on any sufficiently complex or long PDF file can lead to shutdown.
This policy is prudent on iPhones and was appropriate for iPads for a long time, but not today. For over a decade, I’ve had to tell forScore users that the reason they can’t rearrange a PDF file or create an archive of their library is because of the watchdog timer; that you, Apple, decided that terminating my app and losing work is better than letting it complete a user-initiated task (even though users can quit any app manually if needed).
The same processors power both iPads and MacBooks whose battery life is measured in days, not hours. Stage Manager was basically designed to be used on iPads while connected to—and powered by—an Apple Studio Display. So why can’t users take advantage of that power, even in situations where these concerns are moot? Why is app termination the right choice on an iPad but never on a Mac?
iPads are incredible, but their biggest downside is an artificial policy limitation imposed by you onto hardware that doesn’t deserve it. You took iPadOS and split it off from iOS for situations just like this: it’s time to leash your watchdog and let users get back work.
For today’s episode of the iPad Pros podcast, Justin spoke with Tim Chaten about forScore’s history, his approach to development, and how the evolution of the iPad lineup and its accessories has created incredible new opportunities for innovation. You can find the episode at iPadPros.net or by searching for it using your favorite podcast player.
To celebrate the release of forScore 14 and its brand new icon, we’ve created a few clothing items over at Cotton Bureau so you can wear some of forScore’s iconic logos for the first time ever and show off your support. We’ve never done anything like this before but we had fun putting these together and we’ve got more merchandise planned, so be sure to check back soon for more!
This week we introduced forScore 14, and today we wanted to talk a little more about something that may not seem like a big deal: Apple Pencil hover detection. This feature was introduced last fall with Apple’s latest iPad Pros featuring M2 processors, and unfortunately we got no advance notice that it was coming so we couldn’t take advantage of it until now.
With this hardware upgrade, apps can detect when Apple Pencil’s tip is near the screen but not touching it. This allows developers to add things like preview indicators, advanced gestures like pinching to resize the preset before you draw, and more. That’s already a great upgrade, but there’s one more thing that really elevates the annotation experience in forScore—instant annotation.
Instant annotation is a combination of settings that makes it easier to annotate without entering and exiting annotation mode. This requires forScore knowing when you want to start annotating (easy: when Apple Pencil touches the screen) and when you’re finished (much more difficult). Our solution to this was to provide a setting to automatically exit annotation mode after a period of inactivity. That works, but if you happen to try and draw just as forScore is saving your changes you’ll see no markings appear on the screen.
For this feature to really work well, forScore needs to be able to predict when you’re finished annotating with more accuracy and that’s where hover detection comes in. Now, instead of waiting for a set amount of time, forScore waits until Apple Pencil is far enough away from the screen that it can comfortably assume you’re finished drawing. It removes a lot of guesswork and dramatically improves the reliability of this feature.
Hover detection isn’t something most people can take advantage of just yet, since it’s only available on Apple’s latest and greatest iPads, but as this feature trickles down to other devices in their lineup we think it’ll really make a big difference for musicians who annotate regularly and quickly.
Today we’re incredibly proud and excited to announce the release of forScore 14, the latest major update to our sheet music reading app for iPad, iPhone, and Mac.
After a decade of evolution the metadata panel and tuner have been completely replaced, rewritten from scratch to be more flexible, modern, and powerful. Apple Pencil hover detection supercharges the annotation experience, secondary windows get far more capable, and forScore sports a brand new icon with several alternatives and older versions. With forScore Pro you can do even more like wink to turn pages, and you can now try out Pro features with a 30-day pass that doesn’t auto-renew. All that and more.
Thanks as always to our beta testers, and to all of you for continuing to support forScore and allowing us to keep providing significant free updates like this.
Available now for iPad, iPhone, and Mac
