forScore Comes to the Mac

Today we’re absolutely thrilled to announce the highly anticipated release of forScore for Mac. It’s available exclusively for macOS 11 Big Sur and is offered as a Universal Purchase, meaning that it’s completely free for anyone who has ever bought forScore. Big Sur is also a free update, available starting today.

With the introduction of Apple Silicon-based Macs, it’s easier than ever for developers to get their iOS and iPadOS apps onto the Mac with no modifications—but that’s not what we’ve done with forScore. Instead of letting Apple shoehorn our apps exclusively onto their newest Macs (with significant limitations), we built a unique experience that highlights the best parts of the platform, highly optimized for Apple’s next generation of Macs, while ensuring full compatibility with the millions of Intel-based Macs that are already out there today.

It feels right at home with Big Sur’s dramatically overhauled interface—but it’s designed to be used, not just marketed as a proof of concept. It’s fully-featured and built to be a practical, everyday tool for musicians using almost any Mac. That’s also why we don’t charge separately for it—we want forScore on the Mac to be accessible, especially during this tough year.

It has been a long journey to get to this point, but we know this is just the start of what we’ll be able to do on some of the most incredible, powerful devices out there. Thank you all for your support and enthusiasm, they made today possible and we’re tremendously grateful. Be sure to check out forScore for Mac today, and visit this knowledge base article for complete details or to find answers to some common questions.

forScore 12

Available now for iPad, Mac, iPhone, and iPod Touch

forScore Backup Utility 1.2

Today we released forScore Backup Utility 1.2, a minor update that improves overall stability and replaces the app icon with one that’s more in line with macOS 11 Big Sur’s design guidelines. It’s absolutely free and available immediately. Learn more here.

forScore Backup Utility 1.2

Available now for macOS 10.14 or later

New Content Providers

Today we’re happy to unveil forScore 12.0.7, a big update that includes some great new enhancements beginning with content providers—we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve partnered with Carl Fischer, Presser, and BriLee Music to bring their incredible content to forScore users everywhere. As with our other providers, compatible purchases you make through their marketplaces are made available for direct download through forScore’s Services panel as standard PDF files.

Since we’re now up to six content providers and growing fast, we’ve made some other improvements to forScore 12.0.7 that make it easier to get to your content quickly. First, you can now use contextual menus (tap and hold on iOS and iPadOS or right click with a pointing device) to favorite your preferred content providers and move them to the top of the list. For iOS 14 users, the main menu’s Import button now prompts you to pick from any of the sources you’ve configured—the Files app, by default, then any cloud storage or content providers you’ve logged into.

Finally, we’ve added a new “backwards navigation” setting to face gestures and AirPods Pro gestures that allow you to only turn pages forward if needed, reducing the likelihood of accidental turns and making theses gestures more reliable in certain cases. It’s a free update for all users, so be sure to check it out today!

Content Providers  

Big Sur Updates

Apple is set to make some big announcements tomorrow, likely debuting the first Macs built with their own custom “Apple Silicon” processors rather than Intel’s CPUs. They’re also likely to share the final release date for macOS 11 Big Sur, and we’re happy to announce that all of our Music Box apps and Nocturne have already been updated to support and take full advantage of these changes.

Not only are our Mac apps now optimized to run natively on Apple Silicon Macs and match Big Sur’s updated design, they do so without sacrificing compatibility with Intel-based Macs and continue to run on macOS 10.15 without any issues.

Apple took on a lot this year and the results are impressive and striking. As always, there will be many refinements and updates to come, but we’ve never been more excited for the future of the Mac and we’re proud to be a part of this momentous transition.

Awaiting Mac Updates

Back in August we announced forScore 12 and its upcoming debut on macOS. Nothing about our plans has changed, but forScore is built exclusively for macOS 11 Big Sur which Apple has not yet released, nor have they publicly announced when they expect to. This morning, however, they sent out invites for a Mac-focused media event scheduled for November 10th and we should learn much more then.

For now, we just want to reassure everyone that a few weeks of quiet on this front aren’t a sign that anything is wrong or has changed, just that we’re waiting along with everyone else. We think this is one of the most exciting things to ever happen to forScore and we can’t wait to show it off!

AirPods Pro Gestures

One of the most interesting things Apple announced this year at WWDC was the ability for developers to access data from AirPods Pro’s motion sensors. It requires a firmware update for the AirPods that wasn’t released until September 14th—just two days before we released forScore 12—so we weren’t able to do anything with it right out of the gate. Now that we’ve spent a little bit of time with it we’re ready to introduce something we think is pretty neat.

With forScore 12.0.4, released today, you can now flip pages by turning your head to the left or right while wearing one or both AirPods. Unlike forScore Pro’s Face Gestures, these don’t use your camera and work just as well in the dark. Thanks to Apple’s unique Transparency mode, you can use these head gestures without impeding your hearing. It’s available to everyone for free and does not require a forScore Pro subscription.

Motion data is securely transmitted by Apple’s system frameworks from your AirPods to your device, and access to this data is only provided to forScore if you choose to allow it. That data is never stored or shared in any way, it is processed live solely to provide support for these new gestures. It’s totally private and opt-in.

It has been a huge year for us and we’re still going strong. If you’ve loved all of the improvements we’ve introduced so far, please consider taking a moment to rate forScore on the App Store. Updates like these are always totally free, so we depend on word of mouth and positive ratings and reviews to help us grow and continue to do more each year. Thank you as always for your passion, enthusiasm, and support.

forScore 12

Available now for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch

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.

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.