Goodbye MusicFirst Student iOS App!

Sometimes a goodbye is a GOOD thing! When we first launched the MusicFirst Classroom back in 2014, we quickly realized just how much students (and their teachers) relied on mobile devices to access content and assignments. Back then, the wonderful folks on the Apple iOS team did not allow access to the microphone on their devices in any browser other than Safari. As very little music software could run natively in that browser (which is still largely the case), and the device microphone was not available to the Chrome browser, we were forced to create what is known as an iOS Helper app for the MusicFirst Classroom. Software developers know that every time you have to create something custom for a specific device or browser, it makes everything more complicated (and expensive). We launched the MusicFirst Student App in October of 2015 - making it possible for teachers and students to access our amazing platform and software on any iOS device. Was it a great app? No. The reviews on the iOS store (entirely written by students) were terrible. Never fun to read those. Did it serve its purpose? Absolutely. That said, the development team and MusicFirst was constantly looking for ways to get rid of the app - making it a more seamless experience for users. We always wanted the Chrome browser to be the way that our users accessed out tools. Well, as of two weeks ago, I am very happy to report that the MusicFirst Student App has been decommissioned and is no longer available. That means that everything (including access to the device microphone) is now running natively in the Chrome browser on iOS devices. While this might not seem like a big deal to many, it is a HUGE win for us and our customers. Thanks to Michael Avery and his team for making this a reality. Onwards!