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]
September 29, 2011
| News
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]
September 24, 2011
| News
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.
September 19, 2011
| News
Accompanying today’s release of our newest app, forScore: Darkroom, is another minor forScore update—version 3.0.5. We’ve been working hard on a string of maintenance updates over the past several weeks that have focused on refining the big changes we made with 3.0 and fixing bugs, and 3.0.5 is no exception.
It’s packed full of improvements and even incorporates some of the ideas we implemented in forScore: Darkroom, like the option to export files in grayscale as well as full color. And, with iOS 5 right around the corner, we’re continuing to make minor adjustments that’ll ensure a smooth transition for all of our customers. As always, forScore 3.0.5 is a free update for existing users, or just $4.99 USD.
[Update: Some of the changes that we made in 3.0.5 to improve two-finger tap detection inadvertently affected annotation performance. We sincerely apologize for this oversight, and have already submitted a fix to Apple for approval. Please do not install this update if you rely on annotation.]
[Update 2: Version 3.1 has now been released, fixing this issue.]
Without being a developer, you may not realize just how disproportionate sales figures are to the number of ratings and reviews an app gets. We’re not going to dive into sales data, but we’ll venture to guess that apps get, on average, less than 2 ratings for every hundred sales (assuming they’re not actively asking people for feedback). What’s worse, apps get less than one review for every two hundred sales.
If you’re reading this, then you’re probably a forScore user or considering becoming one. Either way, your final purchasing decision will likely depend at least in part on the reviews in the App Store. Most shoppers don’t just look at these and make a decision based on them alone, but isn’t it scary to think that your opinion of an app depends on the opinions of the 0.5% of people who actively decided to review an app?
Many developers try to solve this problem by asking their users to rate or review their app from within the app itself. Now, as much as ratings and reviews can conceivably help boost sales and in turn benefit overall development, we’ve never been keen on the idea of prompting people to give us their feedback within the app itself. In fact, we’ve never asked for reviews before at all. You bought the app, so you should be able to use it without getting nagged for anything that isn’t designed to help you, the customer.
On the other hand, we know how useful these reviews actually are, and so we’d like to ask for a few minutes of your time to help potential customers understand the real pros and cons of using forScore. Maybe there’s something you didn’t realize from our marketing or from other reviews that you think is important to know, or maybe you just want to give us a shout-out! Just know that Apple doesn’t allow you to review an app if you downloaded it with a promo code. (Sorry, AirTurn promotioneers!)
Thanks for reading, and thanks as always for your support.
