With the release of iOS 5 right around the corner, many of you are likely wondering if it’s safe to update or if you should hold off for a little while. We’re happy to report that as of today, with version 3.1.3, we’re ready. We’ve done a lot of work to prepare for this release, and although there’s no way we can know for certain that we’ve caught every change, we don’t anticipate any major problems. If you rely on forScore—or any app for that matter—you’ll need to decide when the time is right to upgrade, but we think it’s going to be a seamless transition.
There is one important difference with the latest version, however, that results from policy changes on Apple’s behalf: we’ve had to remove our automatic backup feature entirely. It’s an unfortunate change, since we firmly believe that this feature does nothing but benefit our customers (even if it breaks a few rules in the process.) In the end, however, we have no choice but to adapt and move on. We work hard to make forScore the best it can be, and we’re looking forward to the future and all of the great iOS updates we’ll get to yell, sweat, and eventually cheer through. We hope you like it.
For the man who changed our lives and made our company possible: thank you. We’ll miss you, Steve.
San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, a non-profit organization that “aims to make chamber music a vital part of the cultural life of the San Francisco Bay Area,” will be hosting their fourth annual Chamber Music Day—a free day of live music in San Francisco. We’re excited to be sponsoring the event, and encourage our readers in the area to check it out. Chamber Music Day is October 16th, at de Young Museum from 10AM until 5:30PM. [SFFCM]
Last week we released forScore version 3.1, featuring a completely rewritten metronome and an all-new pitch pipe. The response has been tremendous, and today we’re excited to announce the launch of our newest app, “Pitch, Please!” for iPhone and iPod Touch. As promised, we’ve brought our newest forScore utility to the small screen for everyone to enjoy and use.
We’ve worked hard to make ours the best pitch pipe around: it looks great and it’s a breeze to use. It features two high-quality sound sets and a smooth tone generator for even greater precision. It has a three-octave span and supports C-C and F-F ranges. Best of all, it’s just 99 cents, so now there’s no excuse to be caught without a pitch pipe ever again! [iTunes]
We’re happy to announce the immediate availability of forScore 3.1 which fixes an issue with annotation responsiveness and makes two big changes:
The first is the addition of a pitch pipe—something that people have been asking for since we first released forScore last year. We’ve always understood the value of integration, since switching back and forth between apps on the iPad can be a pain, but we also didn’t want to just add a “me too” feature. We wanted to make something really special, and we think that with the extra time it took we’ve done that. In fact, we love our pitch pipe so much that we’re going to be releasing it as a standalone iPhone app in the coming weeks.
Our metronome, on the other hand, was included right from the start but has always been better in theory than in practice. Although the interface has stayed the same for the most part, we’ve rewritten the code a number of times to try and find some way of making it more accurate—with limited success. We know that a metronome isn’t something you can do halfway, though, so we kept at it even with all of the dead-ends.
With 3.1, that has all changed. We’ve rewritten the interface from the ground up so that it’s easier to use (no more trying to let go of that slider without moving your finger), we’ve added time signature support, and you can tap the screen to set the tempo by ear. Most importantly, though, it’s incredibly accurate and won’t slow down even when you’re using large files. It’s a whole new generation of one of the most important features of forScore, and we think you’re going to love it.
