A calculator isn’t necessarily the best tool for complicated analyses, but sometimes it’s the best tool that’s readily available. Because PCalc is in my phone, its capabilities—whatever they are—are always with me. The addition of user-defined functions allows me to do calculations away from my desk that I couldn’t do before.
Briefs is meant for iOS designers and developers who, before handing image assets over to Xcode to start writing code, want to see whether their app idea is feasible in terms of design and user experience. Essentially, if design is Stage 1.0 of a development process and coding is Stage 2.0, Briefs is the 1.5 step in between. Briefs is a powerful tool for professionals who aren’t afraid of working with a Photoshop-like UI to connect image assets, distribute animations, transitions, and more.
The original setup for Briefs circa 2009 was to hand-write a script in a text editor, then package that script with a few images and find a way to get it onto the device to play in the Briefs iPhone app. In hindsight it wasn’t a good process and it was confusing. But most importantly it threw up red flags at Apple because they thought it was a programming language.
Briefs is now a Mac application that allows you to build briefs visually, the way designers and non-developer humans want to work. Then when you’re ready to see it on the device, you push the resulting document (called a brief) to Briefscase, our free iOS app.
