Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App
sketch.com
sketch.com
I loved sketch and was a devout user for years.
But with Sketch, I can only communicate with a very small set of people. It required a plethora of other tools and services to share, get feedback, or insights on my work.
The tool is only as effective as the reach of its creation. If technology has shown us anything in this generation, it is that reach and collaboration are immensely more valuable than tools themselves.
I've watched our company move from Sketch to Figma. The crappy performance is a relatively small price to pay in exchange for inclusive design.
My hope is that eventually Figma will launch platform native apps for MacOS and Windows, because I have zero hope that Sketch is ever going to figure out that they've been driving on the road to irrelevance for the past several years.
I assume it’s unintentional, but the rest of your comment twists the original meaning of the maxim[0]. In my experience, “design is communication” generally means a slightly less obvious thing: how through the medium of your design you communicate with the end user.
Your points about the importance of communication between designers are valid, but by using that maxim you make it sound like all design is done in teams, which isn’t fair—a single person can design a great product (and need none of the collaboration tools), if they do indeed understand their users well.
[0] Here’s a lovely article: https://jnd.org/design_as_communication/
Also, the focus still seems to be on the Mac app, everything goes through that. That's still a big hurdle when it comes to collaboration.
What is the point is that Sketch didn't have the functionality they needed at the time they needed it, so they migrated to Figma.
Asking someone to actually install an app is also itself a huge barrier.
Installation of native apps on desktop is a nightmare requiring at least two or three steps, which is unforgivable to most users in 2020 for anything approaching consumer or collaboration software. For that kind of software anything with more than one step in 2020 is broken and unusable. Nobody is going to jump through hoops just to view a proposal or something.
Mobile OSes made this somewhat better, but not much. App stores are slow, hard to search, and a nightmare for developers which discourages things from being written for them. Users also dislike installing mobile apps now as they assume, usually correctly, that any mobile app is so riddled with spyware it's borderline malware. Each install is yet another thing that's likely to be sucking your contacts, spying on your clipboard, tracking your phone usage, and sending your location to ten different adware monetization platforms.
Nothing compares to the ease of entering or clicking a URL and bam you're there.
Reality is if your average user can't click and install, very few are going to use your GUI software. They don't care how it's made. This is the great divide between engineer and user that's examples every day here on HN.
[1] https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to...
Native is nice, native is fast, and it will have its place (compare how bad is Google Meet compared to Zoom with respect to CPU/RAM), but web is becoming "good enough".
Only if you are using a Mac. On linux, the zoom client is neither fast nor (in my admittedly slightly subjective opinion) nice.
edit: judging by `strings`, it's Objective C/Cocoa app on Mac. As native as it can be. No idea on Linux.
I see my processor spin up to 90% utilization whenever I do a zoom call.
thats rarely true for complex web apps... (doubly true if your using firefox)
But I'm not a pro, don't have corporate to pay for my license, may only use a drawing, design, paint program occasionally.
If you just owned that version of the software it would work forever instead you are at the mercy of the platform forever.
Caveat emptor
Take a look at Sketch. You can use a file on future versions...but up to a point. If you hit that limit, you will have to buy the upgrade.
Once you are in Figma, you are trapped forever. No way to get out your original editable artwork files.
Buyer beware!
I could switch to Figma from Sketch very easily because I could upload my Sketch files in Figma and Figma could deconstruct them into layers and elements with even layer names intact!
Vice versa? No.
Even Photoshop files .PSD are readable in many other photo editing apps.
Figma.. no never.
However, the only page I found is https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041060434-Genera..., which says they’re committed to your privacy, but doesn’t mention data portability.
Figma is significantly more expensive than Sketch, e.g. for individuals: $144/year vs ($99 for first year + $79 for next years), and that's if you choose to upgrade Sketch every year, which you don't need to.
Figma also doesn't really work offline.
I wouldn't die on that hill.
My girlfriend is a UX professional that does most of her work in Sketch. She doesn't care about macOS beyond the fact that it's required by the tools she has to use.
I impulse-built an overpowered Windows machine earlier this year and tried to pawn it off on her, but she didn't even want it because it doesn't run Sketch. She's stuck on a Macbook.
Some people are replying to you saying there are these great benefits to being macOS native, but they really pale in comparison to having to learn something as complex as Sketch. A few familiar component paradigms don't really put a dent in the learning curve, or it's at least vastly overstated. I'd liken Sketch more to Photoshop in the sense that some native components aren't going to make the hard stuff easier.
One practical downside of being macOS-only is that it makes those hard fought Sketch skills less portable and any business that uses Sketch in their pipeline now has a hard platform requirement. Maybe they'll choose something else like Figma. That's something much more tangible to a Sketch professional.
Even VS Code's popularity among developers (the one group presumably sensitive to "native" vs not) suggests how little weight "native" carries with most people. When it's time to get work done, turns out there are more important considerations.
I think you're right, hard to imagine it's a hill worth dying on.
In my agency Mac is there because of tradition from developers and designers. More and more developers jump ship to better hardware and use Windows with WLS2 or Linux. Designers tend to stay with the Mac even if they switch to Figma. Some years back it was PS -> Sketch. Now it is Sketch-> Figma massively for a year or so.
An overpowered Windows machine is best suited for gaming, not design work. Vector graphics tools like Sketch work fine on a MacBook. They don’t need a desktop grade CPU with tons of RAM and a powerful video card.
An overpowered machine would definitely be welcome. My point was to emphasize how a crossplatform app would let her take advantage of the opportunity (a new computer I built for one game that I'm giving away) where a native app does very little for her.
I use a Macbook myself and encountered the same thing on the new Windows machine. Every application that was Mac-only was just downside. It made me extra motivated to finished shifting my work environment to crossplat apps like VSCode. And CLI tools that worked well in WSL2.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816
So I believe both platforms are problematic. Does Windows try to do way more data collection by default? Sadly yes. Is Mac without fault? Sadly no.
My design team and myself will take the sanctity of a native app to create quality work any day versus a "design" free for all in the browser with everyone playing decorator.
I manage a design team and there’s no way in hell we would go back to Sketch.
To even think that having a “native” app has any bearing isn’t accurate at all. Sketch is so slow compared to Figma. You aren’t using multiplayer everyday but when you do need it, there’s nothing like it.
Seeing you write this, a doubt creeps that you ever used Sketch.
But if your team itself is functioning well and has respect for each others input it works well.
Agree to disagree (without calling it stupid beyond comprehension). Design is so much more than final UI. It's the whole experience, how it works and how it's distributed. And that involves a lot of stakeholders, not just one designer.
I hate that WhatsApp, Skype and other crap Electron apps that I’m forced to use because of other people can’t do simple things like propor multi language spell checking that macOS has had since day one and that every other app gets for free.
My canary in the coal mine: Apple’s own SF Symbols.
intuitively, it would seem apples answer is to make mac apps behave/look like ipad/catalyst appe (e.g big sur's uo redesign)
And with Apple Silicon, Im not sure that the restriction right now is architecture. Swift supports both x86 and ARM right? The problem is that the interactions are different in the desktop OS and simply recompiling or running it on desktop would not be a great experience.
Worth noting Sketch broke spell check many versions back around the time I stopped using it.
Please substantiate this claim. To me, the opposite is true.
But Chrome is a klackety resource hog compared to Safari.
Web versions of native apps always feel clunky in comparison and they're almost always missing features, like accessibility.
lol
It's just not realistic at larger orgs (or IMO smaller ones too) to expect everyone to be on a Mac.
Then came Figma which solved this problem completely.
Are we just accepting that Sketch is “dead” now? Genuinely curious. I realize Figma has been doing great things, but wasn’t under the impression that Sketch is over.
That said, these were all website and mobile app design teams, and another commenter mentioned that Sketch is better for print design. Still, have to imagine that print is a shrinking part of the overall marketplace.
We had at least 4 people in the team that ran a (poorly performing, annoying) VM with OSX just for sketch.
Figma’s first-mover advantage is significant, though.
Back in the day we used to judge the viability of Apples new techon if the Adobe suite was using them. This was a big deal during the Classic to OS X switch and the PPC to Intel switch.
I'm convinced Apple sees the future of Macs as running iPad apps, Photoshop and Illustrator are already there. Just how many other classic Mac apps do you think Apple consider critical? I think I can name 8.
As someone who's worked on a lot of collaborative technology, I find it weird how most of the interest in collaborative editing is confined to the web. As I understand it, Figma's internal collaborative engine is written in C++ anyway.
Collaboration is also much more useful when you're not limited to only working with people using the same OS. Multi-platform distribution is built into web apps, but it takes a lot more effort to create good native apps on several platforms.
Also, of course, no need to install anything on the web, which is important for frictionless collaboration.
---
It's no surprise that both desktop and mobile OS-s are very much not optimized for cross platform development. It's a feature (for owners of those OS-s), not a bug.
There are still print designers, packaging designers, exhibit designers, illustrators, the list goes on. I don’t see Sketch as dead, if anything it’s been getting a lot of cool new features over the past months.
I don’t know what the bandwagon is doing, other than that I’m aware that Figma is also popular, but clearly cloud software has been contending with native for some time, each with their own advantages, and so it’s not surprising or concerning that software vendors of both software platform types would market the advantages of their chosen platform.
I love Sketch but it's closer to Illustrator or XD (at least, that's how I use it) than Figma. If they want to throw shade it should be at Adobe, since their interface is just better and app is faster/smaller/doesn't run six background daemons.
On a different note, I've heard multiple pitches where startups position themselves as "Figma for X" but never "Sketch for X." Figma is a platform that is building out into different markets, Sketch has much smaller applicability.
They may not put it in those terms, but they do. They can tell when an app feels 'weird' or slow (be it actually slow or just higher latency). That depends a lot on the user base for the specific app in question. The more 'casual' the user base, the less it matters.
Being native also allows you to get functionality for free that other users may depend on. In OSX it translates to things like scripts, or more often, assistive devices, like screen readers.
I won’t go into why (as everyone here seems to be trying to convince everyone else, who aren’t really listening, anyway. I’m not really looking to change my viewpoint).
Figma is cool. I’m working with a designer, now, and we’ll see how it goes. Not sure I’d really say it was a direct Sketch competitor, though. I think Adobe Illustrator is Sketch’s biggest competitor, and that says a lot about Sketch.
Ironically Jetbrains IDEs are Java, using Java Swing for the UI[1]! This is even less native than VS.Code where at least native widgets are used.
I guess this shows how much our impressions are formed by expectations!
On my laptop (6 core 3,9GHz 32GB RAM and NVME) VS Code is fast and responsive, still wastes lots of RAM though. Jetbrains tools meanwhile were way more laggy on the same setup.
Just going to leave this here https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/
And I dream the day that React Native for Windows/Mac team at Microsoft manages to force a VSCode rewrite.
There is absolutely no reason not to be responsive, low on memory and as powerful as a native app.
[1] https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...
I think it's great that this is what they want to focus on, but it's not very convincing as a business decision in general -- it feels like doubling down on the past.
Nearly want to shoot myself every time I'm told, "Hey, I'm sending over the Sketch file" or "sigh An Illustrator again? I wish you had a mac w/ Sketch when you made these wires".
I can't blame the people who say that, but god damn just release a windows version. There's Lunacy for windows, but it's buggy as hell.
Call me old fashion, but I'm sticking to Illustrator for the time being
I do like native apps and would prefer them all things being equal. But all things rarely are equal.
That’s why I use VSCode instead of Sublime. And Gmail instead of Apple Mail.
Instead of justifying why native apps are better they should really just explain why Sketch is better. None of the reasons they gave are compelling.
Sketch is a great individual tool, but Figma is a great organizational tool.
For Sketch to write this means they don't plan on competing with Figma, I assume because it would likely put them behind multiple years in R&D.
People uses Macs because they want to use Macs and software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem.
probably true ~4-5 years ago, but not so much today. Catalina broke a lot of apps (due to SIP?). Big Sur is likely to break even more existing apps. In one case, it was seen that Apple apps do not obey the same rules that third party developers must abide by (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816).
I use a mbp at this point because it's not Windows.
Precisely the same. I used to be a big fan of the Apple ecosystem. When Jobs said the customer doesn't know what they need, he was usually right... he of course was a gifted visionary. Apple has continued with the same mindset but without the gifted visionary, in some cases with comical decisions e.g., keyboard, touchbar, soldering SSD to logic boards with high failure rates).
Can't we just rustle up a few obscenely rich billionaires to donate a hundred million to develop an OS with a top priority of quality and usability rather than lock in.
The only thing I really, really miss is OmniGraffle.
However, this is to be expected from organisations that is powered by one charismatic leader.
ehhh. I think if you did some analytics of “apps Mac users use” an absolute ton would be “a web browser and very little else”. I can think of very few truly native Mac apps I depend upon and that keep me on the platform.
What does keep me on Macs is that every now and then I need to compile an iOS app. Apple give me no choice. Aside from that I’d say a lot of developers choose Macs because they’re the least worst POSIX platform, not because Mac native apps are a shining beacon on a hill.
As a longtime Mac user, I really wish that Apple would make it possible to compile iOS apps on iPad. Not for myself, but for the developers who are only on the Mac for iOS development. I don't think it does anyone any good to force them to be in a place where they don't want to be. I have no ill will against iOS developers, but I also don't want them to transform the Mac into something non-Mac. Mac has always been a "niche" platform, and that's fine! Let the users who are here voluntarily stay, and let the users who are here only "by force" go to a platform that suits their needs better, perhaps iPad. If Xcode for iPad can facilitate that, I'm all in favor.
Should I feel ashamed or something for saying yes? I hear all the bitching about how Electron is bloated, but I run Slack and VS Code all day and never have resource issues on my MBP.
Sketch isn’t bad software at all, but they are really losing out to the network effects of Figma. Design software isn’t like IDEs where everyone in an organisation can use their favourite one - orgs choose design tooling that is shared across the whole design team, and often used by the FE devs too to some degree.
I feel a little sorry for Sketch but if they are not going cross-platform, at this point the only thing Sketch can do to remain at least a little bit relevant is to develop features Figma doesn’t have, maybe some animation tools and scripting for more interactive prototypes, and find a niche in that.
They’ll have a core set of customers who will appreciate it, but I’m not sure they’re going to pay the bills just because you’ve convinced them stay, which they probably would’ve done anyway
They might have decided that it is easier to continue on the current path.
This has just been solved: https://www.figma.com/blog/behind-the-feature-autosave/
Interesting timing on these articles getting published. Almost at exactly the same time, and almost polar opposites.
The underlying rendering tech is based on Apple frameworks so they are not "home". They are stuck. What a nice way of saying it.
Targetting a single platform and taking advantage of its features is totally fine for a small developer or niche app. It's a lot easier to get going, maintenance costs are lower.
However for a big app like Sketch cutting corners like that becomes a liability in the long term. Porting to another platform would mean rewriting the rendering layer or reimplementing the system frameworks to keep their designs work 1:1. It's now a huge strategic disadvantage.
Even their own apps would benefit from this. What if iMessage and FaceTime were cross-platform? Short term, maybe it was a moat for Apple - but now there are so many other cross-platform apps which will slowly kill the Apple-only ones because of network effects (pronounced in chat/calling/social apps).
I think iMessage and FaceTime could have taken significant market share from WhatsApp and Zoom/Skype - this will become even more relevant when those apps become more platform-like (WeChat style).
And of course Adobe has many apps in the iOS App Store.
Some reasons on why Sketch is not a good design tool:
1. Exclusion: Sketch was never cross-platform. There by excluding people. Design is all about inclusion. There have been numerous requests to make sketch available on windows. 2. Apple only: Sketch was made to design stuff for Apple Ecosystem and that mostly remains that way. 3. Cost: Sketch exlcudes people to design basis cost. People measure the cost of sketch as USD 99. However, the real cost is cost of owning a Mac and then owning a Sketch license. Owning a Windows/Linux machine with Figma / Xd is way cheaper and makes the tools of trade accesible to the masses.
As i contrast these with Figma Or XD or even InvisionStudio, the tools of trade are far more accesible to the masses.
A feature based comparison is not helpful as Sketch can catchup to Figma (is already doing so with Sketch Cloud).
A designers take.
Just pointing out that your post is built on this fallacy.
In Sketch, ppl use to have everything in one huge file. Lots of variants, a/b tests, different flows. But with Figma, you need to make a library of shared components, and split everything into smaller files so you don't have to redownload the whole design every time you want to put a comment on something. This does require you to sub though.
Source: I'm helping companies setup their Figma processes and files structure so they can work effectively. This approach works the best.
I used to build a Mac-only native app for real-time audio processing, which was great for battery life, snappy performance and had no latency. But the work that Apple pushed on me just to keep things running okay-ish across OS releases was too much to bear compared with the meager revenue of only serving 10% of the addressable market.
By now, my app is using a cross-platform C++ framework so that I can compile the same code for Windows, Linux and Mac. Windows and surprisingly Linux pay for development of new features, while Mac is more of a prestigious afterthought. Needless to say, I'm not using native Apple frameworks anymore and battery life on OS X has suffered. But finally, the same C++ code will compile nicely across OS X versions, the app is profitable, and I'm not stressed by every WWDC anymore.
And then when Epic showed me what I had feared all along - namely that Apple is happy to sacrifice their loyal developers in the name of profits - I was just glad that I had taken the jump off Apple-specific development tools early enough.
There are no product people left in charge at Apple. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
Most of the product moves now are just BOM reductions or ways to milk more service revenue. Calling it now, the Native Mac OS App this blog post champions won't exist in 10 years. Apple will kill it because iPads and iPhones outnumber Macs, the norm for Apple now is to get a cut of software sales and the sort of Native app Sketch represents doesn't get them that cut.
The future of MacOS is it's the place you go to multitask "the iPad apps you know and love". This will be a bitter pill for myself and everyone here to swallow but if you believe I'm wrong then what you actually believe is that Tim Cook understands the value of an open operating system enough to justify not getting a cut on all those software sales, do you truly believe that?
People have been predicting doom for Apple from various angles since the 1980s and they always end up having to eat their shoes:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=500
If anything, Apple Silicon Macs will usher in a new era of Apple exclusivity, and you'll move on to predicting doom for their Next Big Thing. :)
Think you're missing the point what I'm making and passing it off as just general Apple negativity.
Which app is that?
LAWO hardware mixing desks are Linux based, so the broadcast world demands Linux tools.
But the whole thing started out as an Apple exclusive app to be used together with Pro Tools. Ironically, Pro Tools has also had lots of problems with new macOS releases, so when their Windows presence grew, we observed our most important customers jumping ship and decided to follow them.
The C++ framework is JUCE. I'm a big fan of its visual editor and how easily you can extend that to support your own GUI components.
If users have other options, that might explain the difference in your revenue across platforms.
To be clear, many App Store rules seem arbitrary and ill defined (and enforced), but Epic is not the one to support here for what it did.
A common ego-driven thinking mistake I catch myself making: I subconsciously push myself to believe a false narrative that supports my previous decisions so that I don’t appear stupid in front of my peers and so that I don’t throw away previous work. I think Sketch is making this mistake.
It's tough. When you've raised money and have so much external pressures to succeed in the way you said you would when you raised money - it's tough to own mistakes and honestly, objectively analyze your work.
I sincerely hope Sketch does well in the coming years, their work has benefitted me tremendously, but I feel their focus is off at the moment.
Indeed, what a ridicolous example that is! I've not once used the built in dictionary on purpose, only clicked it by mistake. And they chose the word "reading" to highlight some sort of usefulness?
I love Sketch and am a paying user with our company, but this article and discussion does not leave me hopeful for a bright future.
I wouldn't bank my company's existence on a another company that could not care less if I existed. Much less would I praise and bend over backwards to promote someone else's products other than my own in my marketing materials like this.
What a bizarre corporate decision.
Except the choice of using another brand of computer.
Figma has been a godsend allowing me to do my 2D design work on any platform.
What level of performance do you need and how does the latest Mac Pro with AfterBurner and whatnot fall short of it?
Most of my work is in OctaneRender
If I were to do a build today:
I'd buy Threadripper 24 core = £1245
For Apple this would be 24 Core Xeon from Apple = £6000, just for the processor on top of the base price of £5000
I'd buy RTX 3090 (OctaneBench score 670) £1399
For Apple Radeon Pro Vega II Duo (OctaneBench score 412) £5200, I could buy 3 3090's for that price...
It's just no contest, £3500 machine outperforming something over £16,000
It's a generous subscription, but it's still basically a subscription once you're not working in a silo.
I do absolutely agree that native apps are a much better experience. I prefer Paw over postman every time for this reason too.
However creating a Sketch plugin which downloads a simple JSON was an absolute nightmare.
When you develop with native you get performance and UI for free. When you develop with the web you get.. the web.
This is also why people fundamentally disagree on whether one or the other is good: they have different outcomes that fit different needs.
Obviously if collaboration is needed, being in web technology helps a lot since you're already inside a communication platform.
If your need is "single person focus" then that brings no value.
Weirdly enough, in terms of performance, the Figma Electron app feels slower to me than the Figma web app (in Chrome). Go figure. But it still feels just as quick as Sketch, so performance is not a criteria for choosing Sketch over Figma. I made the full switch only recently but it's a no-brainer. Plus, it's free.
Until very recently I would have championed how critical it is for tools like this to be native apps but honestly Figma has proven that wrong, it just blows Sketch completely out of the water in terms of performance, stability and collaboration.
To make matters worse Apple just doesn't offer a machine powerful enough for the 3D part of my work, even if I spent $7000 with Apple I'd still get significantly better performance paying around $3000 for a PC build so Figma is a godsend working across all the platforms I use and all the platforms my coworkers use.
This pitch seems even more surreal as Apple moves away from MacOS, these technologies that the Sketch team are talking about being so important are clearly considered the past by Apple and technology like catalyst being the future. I honestly can't shake the feeling that a not insignificant part of Apple considers the future of the Mac as the place you go to run multiple iPad apps and because of that the technology Sketch is built with will eventually be discontinued within 10 years.
Not to mention, they've had 4 years since Figma's launch to know they need a collaboration feature shipped, it's been "Coming Soon" for years now. I actually presumed they were just doing a full webtech rewrite but judging from this it's just that writing those kind of features into a native app is a gigantic task.
Really a professional tool in 2020 that doesn't have Google Docs style collaboration is a broken tool, it's very difficult to work with remote workers without having presence within the documents.
Finder? A file browser exists in every OS and browsers support browsing file systems well. I have so many thousands of files at this point, using a file browser isn't an advantage to me.
Time Machine? I've never used it because my thousands of files have been stored in a cloud sync app for a decade and I don't think about backups anymore.
Keyboard shortcuts? Well, maybe I should do more of this, but I don't create many of my own. I prefer the command line, actually.
Drag toolbar items around? I'd rather learn their original locations so I don't have to customize everytime I install something.
I'll stop there. I actually enjoy some native apps but even those I typically wish they weren't native. What if I want to run them on my Chromebook for a bit? What if I decide I can't drop the money on a Mac anymore and go for Linux? What if I don't like how the ecosystem locks me in going forward? Today I love my Mac, but I'm not sure I'll still love it tomorrow. Web based and cross platform software gives me more choice.
I’m basing the following purely on your words in this comment. Does your cloud sync app support syncing or syncing with backups, where file version history exists for a long duration and files are stored (even the locally deleted ones) till it runs out of space (and initiates cleanup at that point)? If yes, that may be ok (though still not comparable to a local backup that could be a lot faster depending on the need). If not, then it’s nowhere close to what Time Machine offers (or what a backup application like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner with history support offers).
As a designer, I’d much rather collaborate via the Git-like system of Abstract, committing changes and merging pull requests than have things happening elsewhere in the file I’m working on with no versioning or notification.
Real-time collaboration has never been in demand among developers, has it?
I do not miss Sketch one bit.
At least, with Sketch/macOS the code is executed on the device you can control (to a degree).
[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
The platform you chose to build on is more of a business decision. One that I’m guessing Sketch is increasingly trying to rationalize to themselves.
Being proud they build a native app isn’t going to help them compete with Figma.
They might not be able to compete with Figma, but to me personally, I definitely appreciate native apps way more than shells around web based one, which is why I prefer Sketch to Figma.
Particularly when it comes to trying to rank against the modern web. Especially given the testimony of Figma users ITT, because they suggest cross platform availability as the true driving value.
One thing I’d point out is Sketch is acting all lovey about Apple’s awesome APIs right now, but they left the App Store with great bitterness a few years ago.
Those fees, as Apple has stated, go in part to paying for these APIs.
And by leaving the App Store Sketch also restricted user licensing as well.
Users don’t care about native or not , they care only about innovation.
By now VSC has developed a moat with their incredible velocity for delivering new features, like voice chat, shared sessions, git + docker + debugger integration, etc.
By the time Nova came out they looked incredibly behind. The front page advertising their app looks cluttered with catch-up features.
That is what nova couldn’t compete with.
Case in point - this comment would have taken me no more than 20 seconds to type, compared with over a minute on this ridiculous iPhone keyboard that gets every third or fourth letter wrong, and just randomly decides to capitalise words in the middle of a sentence.
I’ve been gifted my last few phones, but the next one I buy, I will seriously consider one with a hardware keyboard.
My opinion is that Google's UX is now best in class -- things like Google Docs that are just nearing perfection that everyone seems to have no trouble with. Youtube would be another example of a highly effective UI.
I do think native is quite overrated :)
Coming mostly from a Windows desktop background, I only started developing for Apple devices late on. Holy shit, I can’t believe people have been putting themselves through that horrible experience for the better part of two decades.
Having said that I despair at what Windows has become.
I love that metaphor!
The main issue I have with Xcode, is that it is buggy as hell. I was hoping Xcode 12 would address this, but it’s just as bad as its predecessors.
I'm completely baffled by this statement. The Google Docs UI hasn't changed since it was released ten years ago and it's just an imitation of Microsoft Word from the mid-nineties. What is good or special about it?
The simplicity of the collaboration features was a huge game changer at the time, and it's still best-in-class and very easy.
They are obviously trying - I keep seeing things like workspaces and pinning docs that are obviously experiments in trying to fix it. But not there yet!
I do agree that the Google Suite of tools are very usable though.
Because it doesn't do much. I'm quite frustrated by the lack of features for advanced users.
Having a standard UX across platforms optimized for the uncommon case. The more common case is that the user sticks to one platform so learning an astandard set of conventions is a barrier.
1. The experience of using a native app is substantially superior to web/electron. 2. Figma has done an amazing job of building features to support teams and organizations.
I used to use Sketch, and now I use Figma. Do I wish Figma had a native macOS app? Absolutely. Would it be better than the web/electron app? Definitely.
Native vs web isn't a feature differentiation - it's a matter of user experience (responsiveness), platform integration (filesystem, native controls, accessibility, iCloud), and delivery (App Store vs download). As a company, the choice boils down to: "Are you going to spend more resources supporting multiple platforms but delivering the best possible experience? Or are you going to spend fewer resources to ship an inferior experience faster?".
I do enjoy Figma, but it's worth calling out that they're compromising on user experience by going the Electron route. Yes, I know that maintaining a Swift version of Figma alongside the web version would be tough, but they're not an under-resourced team and I believe they could make it happen.
I think the web generally has these kind of use cases covered, although it would be nice to have the other things you mention (file system/iCloud integration, better accessibility [based on my understanding of Canvas' limitations in this area] etc.).
On the other hand, applications like Logic or Final Cut would be pretty much impossible to build in the browser.
Graphics are important, and styles like that are great for games, but the message they give me is: "The fun doesn't come from the graphics"
Always be sure of the unconscious marketing
Adobe is is a creative powerhouse and has an army of devs and unlimited resources to steal the best features and workflow across all design apps from what I've seen since it first was referred to as project Comet.
It really depends who is on the project. Excellence in execution varies so widely even among top companies. e.g. Microsoft can produce Azure but also run Skype into the ground. They can make Visual Studio Code but also Teams.
Collaborative spaces makes me think what would others think, this leading me to share my work once It is complete or with a caveat this is work in progress.
This is one reason why there is a market for "focused" writers.
Also poolside.fm is a recent one i noticed that has native clients on web, iOS and macOS that strongly demonstrated the power of being native.
Here in India 100% of the Apple products that I have had the misfortune of owning, have been defective. I have purchased them from authorized resellers, and they have been original products. Recent examples: A pair of Airpods that I received as a gift lasted me about 6 months of occasional use before one side stopped charging. Apple Support says these are not covered by warranty. A Macbook Pro which I purchased a few years ago developed a tearing sound in both of its speakers and suffers from the infamous "staingate" issue on its screen. I also follow Louis Rossman on YouTube who routinely highlights the ways in which Apple scams its customers by overcharging for repairs and engaging in shoddy manufacturing. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly difficult for customers or third party repair shops to fix hardware issues due to the proprietary parts. Apple even invented its own screw which requires a special screwdriver set to open their devices. By comparison I have knock-off airpods and a Samsung and Lenovo laptop which work flawlessly despite being purchased much earlier.
Sketch is a fantastic piece of Software, but its true price is essentially ensuring that everyone on the design team is using Mac desktop and laptop hardware, which is overpriced compared to the market, and virtually impossible to repair and maintain on your own. If I invest in PC hardware I can reliably swap out a bad GPU or motherboard or PSU by ordering one off Amazon and having it ready to go the next day. With Apple I have to overpay for the hardware and overpay for the repair - often to the degree that it is almost the same price as new hardware. That is downright criminal.
Until this changes I don't see myself ever supporting the Apple ecosystem at my own expense.
Unfortunately we don't deal directly with Apple, but rather franchises that make it seem like are working closely with Apple. Prices are relatively high but reasonable, and I haven't had issues with support. At my workplace: Apple devices are generally super reliable; and since we started giving Macs to all employees (hundreds) it has put an extremely low impact on internal support.
Most folks in this country still use PC but I think every kid wants an iPad or Macbook (because the other cool kids have them), so it will be interesting to see how things develop going forward.
Sketch is perfect for me as a solo developer, and I would rather not rely on anything that always requires an internet connection.
Thanks for sticking to native! Would be great if Sketch would return to the Mac App Store too.
It's frustrating sometime when you switch machines and software you've purchased for a machine is not available across multiple operating systems.
But I feel sad that I won't ever get to try it. macOS (and eventually iOS) is dead to me as a platform.
So when someone hands off a sketch, I usually have to pester them endlessly to decipher certain parts of it for me. It's their punishment for buying into platform lock-in.
Sketch is a cool app but it sucks and I hate it.