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Briefs Review: A Great Prototyping Tool For iOS Apps

Briefs

Briefs

Briefs has a complicated history.

In September 2009, independent developer Rob Rhyne showed a demo of an iPhone prototyping tool called “Briefs” at the C4[3] conference in Chicago. The day after the presentation, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber called Briefs “impressive” in the way it hit “the sweet spot between simplicity and usefulness”. Back then, Briefs was often described as a “framework” for turning image-based app mockups into animated prototypes; in January 2010, Alex Vollmer published an in-depth review of the first version of Briefs, explaining how you could use Xcode, the command line, and image files to create a “brief” (the name of Briefs’ file format) that, once loaded on a device, would become an animated prototype. Briefs was meant to let developers better understand the “flow” of an app design before turning it into actual code; on the flip side, it also enabled the creation of more realistic mockups that wouldn’t necessarily ship as commercial products. An example of this was the popular “Services Menu for iPhone” concept posted by Chris Clark and created with Briefs.

In the summer of 2010, Briefs’ rejection spiral began. Apple first rejected Briefs for iPhone in June 2010, citing rule 3.3.2 of the App Store Review Guidelines, which said that no app could download interpreted code. Developer Rob Rhyne assumed that the aforementioned notion of an “app framework” could be the culprit, so he resubmitted the app. In August 2010, after attending WWDC 2010 and waiting three months for App Store approval, Rhyne decided to take a break from the project and he open-sourced the 1.0 code. “I still have some good ideas for the platform”, he wrote, “and I hope to get back to them in good time. However, it’s time to focus on other work and projects that can get into the App Store”.

In late March 2011, after nearly a year spent talking to Apple’s review team about Briefs and after another rejection, Rhyne formally announced Briefs would never come out on the App Store, recommending people to keep on using the open-source version on GitHub. For many, that appeared like the end of Briefs.

Three months ago, Rhyne sent me an email introducing a new beta of Briefs, this time with a dedicated “Author” app for Mac, plus iPhone and iPad “Players”. After two years of hiatus, I was skeptical: I thought that Briefs was destined to be perpetually relegated in the limbo of cool app ideas that never were.

Briefs, available today at $199, is an iOS prototyping tool for professionals. It comes with a standalone Mac app that allows you to build and test live prototypes, and a free Briefscase iOS app that lets you test prototypes directly on your iPhone and iPad.

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Tim Cook To Speak at D11 Conference→

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, announcing Tim Cook as a speaker for D11:

There’s lots to talk about, from the explosive growth of the mobile market to intense competition from a range of rivals, most especially Google’s Android, as well as innovative offerings from Korea’s Samsung. It will also be interesting to talk about the changes at Apple under Cook’s leadership, who took over from the late co-founder and industry legend Steve Jobs, as well inquiring about what new products are in the pipeline and how the company is faring in an increasingly high-pressure market.

D11 will take place in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on May 28-30, 2013. Cook joins a list of speakers that includes Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and Google’s Sundar Pichai.

Last year, Tim Cook spoke at D10 and covered topics such as Apple’s growth, leading the company without Jobs, and the post-PC era. Here’s our recap from last year’s interview, and here’s the full video.

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Many Tricks’ New Safari Extensions→

Cool new Safari extensions by Many Tricks, developers – among other apps – of Name Mangler (which I plan on covering soon). I like the vBulletin one:

This extension is for those who use vBulletin forum sites. It adds a contextual menu that lets you open all unread article links in new tabs, with a single click. As of now, it only works for vBulletin, but if you use forum sites based on other systems, we may be able to get it working if you can give us a URL to look at.

It’d be nice to have Chrome versions, though.

(via Dan Frakes)

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Xconomy Gets Hands-On With Automatic for the iPhone→

Currently available for pre-order at $69.95 and now shipping in August is Automatic, a combination of a smartphone app and OBD sensor for your car that tracks your driving economy, helps you diagnose problems with your vehicle, and helps you find where you parked. An iPhone app is launching first, with an Android app coming this fall. While it’s only available in the United States, Automatic makes for an attractive alternative against Verizon’s expensive Vehicle Diagnostics by Delphi, which includes a subscription and a whopping $249.99 up front,  or Torque, which works with some Bluetooth OBD sensors but requires drivers to have more intimate knowledge of their vehicles to get the most out of the Android app and web interface.

Xconomy has a short write up and under 15-minute video on the sensor and iPhone app, featuring a test drive with Automatic Chief Product Officer Ljuba Miljkovic.

If these screen shots remind you of the jogging maps and calorie counts you get with a fitness app like RunKeeper or Runmeter, it’s not a total coincidence. You might think of Automatic as one harbinger of a “quantified car” movement paralleling the quantified self craze. Now that our phones have become so powerful—able to communicate with many different kinds of sensors, and full of sensors of their own—it makes sense that they’re becoming the information hubs for all of our daily activities, from exercising to eating to driving.

Automatic is interesting — at a least from a glance, the company isn’t just throwing a slew of information at consumers on a screen, but rather presenting relevant information in an interface that’s understandable and useful. Automatic knows that not everyone is a mechanic, putting the power of diagnostic information at our fingertips. Automatic’s goal is to improve upon driving efficiency, and Xconomy’s look gives a little bit of insight as to what you can expect if you have or will pre-order the much talked about smart assistant for your car.

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Jawbone Announces UP Platform API, Partnerships, and Acquisition of BodyMedia

Between occasional swaps during the initial run of Jawbone UP wristbands, I wore the original device for a year and continued as Jawbone’s refreshed model hit the marketplace. With UP 2.0 came an updated iPhone app, and Jawbone finally seemed prepared to launch an overdue API that developers could extrapolate data from. And while Jawbone’s bracelet was being refreshed, Nike parternered with Path for their Nike+ FuelBand for sharing their daily progress, something that was similarly suggested by TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis for the UP just months before. I can’t help but admit the same thought crossed my mind as an early adopter.

This morning, Jawbone announced their new UP Platform, a closed API that’s currently available to developers per application and approval. Currently, Jawbone has said that ten partners have worked with the company to integrate their services with the UP app for iPhone (with Android support coming soon).

Beginning today, the UP app version 2.5 for iOS enables you to integrate any of these 10
best-in-class services: IFTTT, LoseIt!, Maxwell Health, MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal, Notch, RunKeeper,
Sleepio™, Wello® and Withings.

Integration with these services is mostly inclusive to the UP app however, presenting additional workout data or weight trends alongside Jawbone’s regular sleep or activity goals. The clear differentiator and the service that has the most potential to do interesting things with UP data is IFTTT, as Lex Friedman from Macworld explains.

Kittredge sounded particularly enthusiastic regarding the IFTTT integration, suggesting several clever “recipes” that Up users could try with that service, such as: If I sleep too little, text me later in the day that I should go to bed earlier; if I log a certain number of steps, tweet about it; or each day, append my progress to a Google document.

Also announced by Jawbone today is an acquisition of BodyMedia, a company that specializes in weight and calorie management, overall activity, and sleep tracking with their Armband and accessories. In their press release, Jawbone says that BodyMedia has the only platform of its kind registered with the FDA as a Class II medical device and that is additionally clinically proven to enhance weight loss.

“Jawbone’s deep expertise with consumer technology, design, and building products that fit seamlessly
into people’s lives is the best way to carry forward many of the innovations that BodyMedia has
developed over the past 14 years,” said Christine Robins, CEO of BodyMedia. “We are eager to pair our
depth of insight and IP with Jawbone’s expertise so that together, we can make an even bigger impact
on people’s health and help them achieve their goals.”

Jawbone launched the UP in 2011 and unfortunately, the band came under intense scrutiny as manufacturing issues resulted in problems such as the bracelets losing their charge after a couple of weeks. Hosain Rahman, CEO of Jawbone, offered early adopters the chance to get a full refund to rectify the issue and examine the problem. With the launch of UP 2.0, Jawbone didn’t just fix the issue, but reengineered the device to make it even more durable and water resistant.

The single-most thing that has me excited about the UP Platform is not only Jawbone’s commitment to making a better product, but also the opportunity for breaking data out of Jawbone’s mobile app. Unlike FitBit for example, there isn’t a web front where someone can log in and access their data — the UP band has to be plugged into an iPhone or Android phone first, and that phone becomes the sole gateway to your information. People wearing the UP band are probably using the device in different ways: for example I don’t track what I consume with Jawbone’s app for calorie tracking, but I do run and track steps. There’s potential for a developer to come behind and complement the data that I actually use and hide what I don’t need or want to see, personalizing my Jawbone dashboard from generalized data to something that shows me improved workout statistics. With any luck and a good developer, I’m also hoping that the UP Platform also lets developers use the band in more interesting ways, such as tracking pushups or body workouts instead of just steps. Integration with a partner like Wello gives me confidence that Jawbone is stepping in that direction.

[via Macworld]

Feed Wrangler: A New RSS Reader With Smart Streams, Filters, Read Later Integration

Feed Wrangler

Feed Wrangler

“I wanted to take a slightly different take on the concept of what an RSS platform should do”, David Smith, independent developer and podcaster, told me about his new product, Feed Wrangler.

Soon after Google revealed they would discontinue their RSS service Reader this July, a slew of companies were quick to announce their existing news reading apps would either support “importing” features to let Google Reader users quickly migrate or, in some cases, be updated with APIs cloning the unofficial Reader one, allowing other developers to tweak their RSS clients for new API endpoints. This is what apps and services like Flipboard, Zite, Digg, and Feedly are doing. Instead, David Smith did something different: he announced he’d be launching an entirely new RSS syncing service, called Feed Wrangler, for an annual fee:

I believe the reason that Google turned its back on Reader and left its users hanging is that they were users not customers. I’m not interested in building a platform designed to attract as many users as possible and then work out how to sustain it later. I want to instead build something that is sustainable from Day 1. I want my customers to feel confident that they can expect this to be around long into the future. I want to build a relationship with them and make something they really, really love.

Feed Wrangler, open to the public today, comes with a website, a suite of native apps, and a $19 annual subscription. Read more

Happy Birthday iTunes Store→

Good roundup of iTunes Store numbers (with subsequent inferences) by Horace Dediu.

I meant to include the following chart in our Q2 2013 overview, but I didn’t have time to create it. Below, you can see how the 850,000 App Store apps Apple touted last week are divided across the iPhone and iPad after the launch of each device’s App Store (July 2008 for iPhone, April 2010 for iPad).

The increase you see after the iPad’s 30th month corresponds to October 2012 – when Apple unveiled the iPad mini.

(click for full size)

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Lessons From The Yahoo Weather App→

Dan Frommer:

“Do we really need another weather app?” Actually, if it’s better, we do. Imagine if they’d stopped making new search engines after HotBot or new smartphones after the Samsung BlackJack.

I couldn’t agree more.

For free/inexpensive apps, the traditional rules of market saturation allow consumers to more comfortably try new apps; at the same time, annual OS updates enable developers to constantly experiment with more powerful technologies to fix problems consumers didn’t even think they had.

Apps are not refrigerators. With software, the diffusion of innovations is cyclic, and that’s why, as far as the App Store is concerned, editorial curation, smart recommendations, and new discovery algorithms will be key areas of improvement. We should never stop thinking about tomorrow.

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