With iOS 7’s stark redesign, color became a very important part of an app’s design. In many ways it’s the most important part, so picking the right shade is no simple matter.
For some, though, an app’s color can be more than just a preference—it’s an obstacle. Color blindness can make forScore’s controls almost indistinguishable from other information on the screen, so with version 8.0 we added the ability to customize this color. Even if you have no trouble identifying controls, you can still change the color to suit your preferences, mood or even your wardrobe. There’s no wrong color (except white—don’t try white or you won’t be able to find anything).
In the Settings section of the tools menu, under Accessibility, select the “Tint color” entry to pick the color that works best for you.
Poking at a screen may have once seemed unnatural, but today we spend a huge amount of time tapping, sliding, and pinching at slabs of glass. It’s a natural input method, and what it lacks in precision it makes up for with things like gestures. Gestures allow 
your device to interpret unique motions, and they work best when they’re location-independent; swiping anywhere on the screen or tapping within large regions to turn pages is much easier than trying to move a slider or tap a button.
Of course, the problem with gestures is that you can’t see them and you don’t always know they exist. There’s one particular gesture that’s so important and frequently used that it’s scary to hear from the occasional customer who still doesn’t know about it: the long press or tap-and-hold gesture that activates annotation mode by default. (Friends don’t let friends use the tools menu to annotate.)
In fact, forScore has three gestures beyond the standard swipes and taps used to turn pages. The long press, a 2-finger tap, and a 3-finger tap. The latter two don’t do anything by default, but all three of them can be customized in the “Gestures” section of the settings panel.
Earlier this year, we were proud to help AirTurn announce their latest page turner, the PED. We knew it would be a fantastic new option for our users and after some preliminary testing we determined that modes 2 and up (standard keyboard modes, like the BT-105 and other page turners) would work with forScore right out of the box.
Unfortunately, after customers started getting their hands on the new devices, some of them discovered that forScore would start turning pages continuously. After some back and forth with AirTurn, we weren’t able to determine the cause of the issue and reluctantly started recommending that these customers return the device.
This issue seems to be specific to the PED’s keyboard modes, the ones forScore uses, so some people assumed it was a problem with forScore’s code. In fact, we have no reason to believe that that’s the case: forScore continues to work as expected with all other compatible page turners, and our handling of page turner signals is largely controlled by iOS anyway. The symptoms don’t appear in other music readers because they use AirTurn’s SDK to communicate with the PED directly in the device’s mode 1.
Mode 1 is where the PED really shines, though: it uses Bluetooth Smart to provide better battery life than the other modes, and it doesn’t interfere with iOS’s virtual keyboard. So to help our customers take full advantage of these technologies, we’ll be adopting AirTurn’s SDK with forScore 8.3 and forScore mini 1.2. We generally don’t like to add third-party code to our app if we can help it, but this time we think it’s worth it.
We know that many of our customers have already gone through the frustrating process of purchasing, trying, and returning the PED and for our premature endorsement we sincerely apologize. If you’ve got a PED and are willing to help us put 8.3 to the test, please consider becoming a beta tester. We appreciate your support, your patience, and despite these bumps in the road we think the PED will ultimately be the right device for many musicians.
Today we’re happy to announce the immediate availability of forScore 8.2 and forScore mini 1.1. These updates have been in the works for quite a long time now, and we’re incredibly grateful to all of our beta testers for their help over the past few months.
Both updates include important bug fixes and enhancements, but forScore mini 1.1 also includes our new Groups service (coming soon to forScore). If you haven’t had a chance to read about Groups, be sure to check out our sneak peek and complete details on our new Groups page. We’re excited to begin rolling out this incredible new feature, and we think it’ll really change the way many of our customers work. [Updated March 2018: the Groups service has since been discontinued, learn more here.]
These are free updates, as always, so be sure to check them out today on the App Store.
Back in February we gave you a sneak peek at an upcoming service called Groups. We’ve been working incredibly hard to get it ready, and our beta testers have been both patient and invaluable during this long process. We had mentioned that forScore 8.2 and forScore mini 1.1 would include this service, but these updates actually include a whole lot more: they fix a ton of minor bugs and restructure some of our code to comply with Apple’s latest best practices.
Although forScore mini 1.1 was approved last month without any issues, forScore 8.2 has been rejected twice now because of the Groups feature. To be clear, both updates have been thoroughly tested and we’re ready to release them. The hangup is specific to the review process and we don’t believe it would impact our users at all.
This is perhaps the biggest update we’ve ever done, so it’s not surprising that there are some hiccups and we don’t fault Apple at all for wanting to ensure that everything works properly. It does put us in a tricky spot with updates, however, and the end result is that we’ll be releasing forScore mini 1.1 with the new Groups service and forScore 8.2 without it.
We have a few other updates in the works and it no longer feels right to hold those updates back because of this sticking point. We’re going to push ahead and let our customers benefit from the huge amounts of work we’ve done while we sort out these technicalities with Apple. It’s not ideal, but that’s how this process works and we know the end result will be worth it. Thanks for your patience, and—as always—for your support.