Justin recently sat down with Philip Rothman and David MacDonald for the Scoring Notes podcast to talk about forScore’s origin, evolution, and the principles that guide its development. Check it out by searching for Scoring Notes within your preferred podcast player, or visit the Scoring Notes blog to read the episode description and give it a listen!
Hi, I’m Justin, and I make forScore (more on that in a moment). Thanks to ongoing controversy at Twitter, a decent number of forScore users have started migrating over to other services. I’ve sparingly maintained a forScore account on Twitter for some time, and I just started one on Mastodon. I plan to experiment a bit, but you can generally expect the same thing from either account: it mostly serves to get the word out about the biggest news and updates concerning forScore and its sibling apps and isn’t regularly monitored for responses or equipped to handle support requests. If you prefer, you can also use this site’s RSS feed to see all news posts.
So that’s the update, but let’s back up a bit—who is this fellow and what happened to the rest of the company? Due to a number of important but boring reasons, I started using the royal “we” to voice all forScore communications. It was a necessary decision back in 2010, and it’s a hard habit to break. But the truth is that I created forScore and have been its sole developer ever since. I also handle pretty much every aspect of running the business and making apps except for support, which I entrust to my partner Isaac.
Moving to a new social network gives me an opportunity to revisit how I approach talking about myself and about my work, so I’m trying to be more singular and authentic going forward. If you’re interested in learning more about me personally and don’t mind unvarnished opinions, feel free to follow me at mastodon.social/@ambulephabus (I don’t expect to be on Twitter for the foreseeable future). Just know that I won’t be ‘on the clock’ in that personal arena and will not be engaging in topics or questions that cross the line into business.
I just want to say, personally, thank you for your support over the years. Your passion has kept me going all this time and I sincerely appreciate it. I look forward to becoming a stronger part of this community very soon.
Apple’s major OS upgrade cycle wraps up next week with the release of iPadOS 16.1 and macOS 13, so we’re getting ready with a few updates of our own. forScore 13.1.5 brings important updates and minor improvements to iOS and iPadOS, and brings all of the great upgrades in 13.1 to the Mac so you can enjoy them across all of your devices.
We’ve also updated some of our smaller Mac apps to get them ready for macOS 13 Ventura: free updates to Cue, TuneWave, and Pitch, Please! are all available now so be sure to install them to keep everything running smoothly.
September 20, 2022
| News
Just over a week ago now Apple released iOS 16 and we introduced forScore 13.1, the biggest update we’ve ever done. We’re so grateful for your patience and feedback while we work to address the bugs that slipped through. We always test our updates as much as we can but going from less than a hundred testers to over a hundred thousand users in an instant is always bound to uncover things we just didn’t see on our own.
There’s a tough balance to strike between fixing every bug as quickly as we can and releasing too many updates in a row, but sometimes we just have to push through. It has been an exhausting week (especially for an app built and maintained by a single developer) but we’re happy with the progress we’re making. Right now we’re aware of a performance issue affecting people with a very high number of files and we’ve added some diagnostics capabilities to 13.1.3 to help us identify and resolve it. So expect a 13.1.4 relatively soon, and then things should quiet down until iPadOS 16 comes out in a few weeks.
There’s one last thing we’d like to point out for those who aren’t aware: although automatic app updates are enabled by default, they’re optional. If you require a near-constant level of stability and even a few days of bugs can severely impact you in professional or educational terms you should turn this feature off and update when you’re ready. You’ve got some control over how this process works and you should use it if you need to.
Thanks once again to our incredible audience, your continuing support and enthusiasm are what drives forScore forward.
September 12, 2022
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Today we’re happy to announce the release of forScore 13.1 for iOS and iPadOS—a huge update that’s been in the works for almost a year. Nearly all of it has been completely rewritten to ensure that it makes the most of today’s hardware and OS features and that it can take full advantage of everything Apple offers going forward.
This update is fully optimized for today’s release of iOS 16, and is ready to shine on iPadOS 16 when that’s released next month. It introduces big upgrades to forScore’s multi-window capabilities and it unlocks new capabilities on devices that support Stage Manager—the most dramatic change to multitasking in years. Many of these changes will also be included in forScore 13.1 for Mac, coming next month alongside the release of macOS 13.
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 and iPhone
September 10, 2022
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iOS 16 and watchOS 9 are coming on Monday, and our standalone pitch pipe app Pitch, Please! is ready to take full advantage of them.
Our free 3.2 update features an Apple Watch complication for watchOS 9 that gives you instant access to your pitch pipe right from your watch face, and the watch app has been optimized for the new Apple Watch Ultra.
We’ve also created a iPhone lock screen widget for iOS 16 that launches the app with just a tap and looks great alongside all of the other changes coming to the lock screen this year.
If you’re getting new devices or planning to install Apple’s major OS updates this week, be sure to check out these great new features!
Available now
Today we’re very excited to give you a sneak peek at forScore 13.1, coming later this year along with iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS 13. This year we’ve completely rewritten most of forScore’s code to set the stage for a whole new generation of updates, we adopted incredible new APIs for upcoming new iPadOS features like Stage Manager, we significantly enhanced secondary windows to provide a full read-write environment, and much more.
forScore 13.1 will be released later this year along with Apple’s major OS updates, but you can try it out for yourself today by becoming a beta tester. Otherwise, be sure to check back soon as we put the final touches on this monumental update.
forScore 13.1 Sneak Peek
Last week, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in earnest, we removed forScore from sale in Russia. We do not condone the actions of the Russian government and will not participate in the Russian economy, no matter how small our impact. We will continue to support our Russian-speaking users worldwide just as we always have, and we will continue to include and update Russian localizations in our app, but forScore is no longer available on the Russian App Store.
This action is both insignificant and punitive, but we believe that punitive measures are now necessary. Removing forScore from sale in Russia won’t hurt those in power, but it will put pressure on the people of Russia who must be the ones to lead their government to as prompt and peaceful a resolution as possible. Not all app developers have the economic freedom to do the same thing we’ve done, but we can—and therefore feel that we must.
We support the Ukrainian people and we believe that music has a unique ability to express our shared humanity no matter our background or spoken language, and we hope that we can continue to serve musicians worldwide again in the future.
Last year with forScore 12.0.5, we added a feature that allows you to turn pages using head movements while wearing AirPods Pro. Now, we’ve learned that this feature also works with AirPods Max and AirPods 3.
Ultimately, which devices support this functionality is up to Apple and can change at any time—either with a firmware or OS update—and since they don’t publish this information publicly we have to rely on hands-on testing to find out what does and doesn’t work. If you’ve got AirPods Max or AirPods 3 be sure to check it out!
We’re happy to announce that forScore 13 is now available for macOS, bringing great features like multi-window support, page flagging, and iCloud Syncing to the Mac. Of course, forScore 13 is fully optimized for macOS 12 Monterey with full support for the new Shortcuts app, so it’ll be ready on launch day (Apple has announced that macOS 12 will be available as a free update beginning on Monday, October 25th).
Available now for iPad, Mac, iPhone, and iPod Touch
