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.
A primary thing Figma understood better than pretty much anyone else is how collaboration among different teams (not just design) works in product development.
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.
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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.