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Comment by parhamn | Hacker News Reader

One thing I think people aren't pointing out is how much Figma seems to have done [1] to make the web platform work for them in the way Sketch is describing the Mac App. It almost seems like a technical moat of sorts. Achieving the ridiculous snappiness Figma in browsers is certainly non-trivial.

[1] https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to...

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It’s snappy for a web app. If it was a native app it would be mediocre.

the thing with web apps is - it's slow, but it is the Java's original goal from the 90s "write once, run everywhere" actually realized. Plus, built-in collaborativeness and automatic updates. And, easier to get developers.

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".

> write once, run everywhere

thats rarely true for complex web apps... (doubly true if your using firefox)

> Native is nice, native is fast

Only if you are using a Mac. On linux, the zoom client is neither fast nor (in my admittedly slightly subjective opinion) nice.

That's an interesting anecdote, as I've only used zoom on linux, but not really related to what you quoted.

Interesting. I'm curious what machine spec you're on. I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on an dell laptop (XPS 7590 with an i9 processor, 32gb ram, discrete Nvidia graphics card).

I see my processor spin up to 90% utilization whenever I do a zoom call.

Zoom is Electron isn't it? That's not native.

No, it's native. At least on Mac.

edit: judging by `strings`, it's Objective C/Cocoa app on Mac. As native as it can be. No idea on Linux.

It's Electron on Linux and what's being discussed is that it's slow on Linux. Nobody refuted that it's slow on macOS, it was even stated.

I will need to check if you’re right.

edit

just judged on dependencies of the deb package, it looks like a native app. But, I will check the actual app.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/204206269-Installi...

Every single day I’m finding myself using more and more Figma over my standard workflow tools like Photoshop and Illustrator...I just absolutely love how fast and snappy it is.

I must be the only one that refuses to pay for a software subscription.

But I'm not a pro, don't have corporate to pay for my license, may only use a drawing, design, paint program occasionally.

Figma is free unless you need team functionality.

You need the team plan if you want to share a design tokens/components across projects, for example a color palette.

There is a really useful free tier - I think the paid tier mostly includes collaboration features.

I had a recent experience with autodesk that shows that free tiers can disappear or be neutered after you've invested significant time and energy into them.

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

It's not just free tiers. Imagine the comments here in a decades time when Figma goes full Adobe and starts to squeeze every last drop of blood out of their customer base.

when the article about not being able to run adobe CS1/2 came up I nervously eyed my copy of CS6 from 2012...

Except some non-subscription software are still SaaS in disguise.

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.

I don't use sketch, so I don't know anything about it. It's mac only and while i have an ipad pro and an iphone, I don't own a mac and dont want one, and thats a mac only app.

I'm not sure why sketch would have the restrictions they have except that forever supporting old formats might be more expensive than they could justify.

I am pro and don't use cloud software in production, actually this is a clause in contract for my clients. They care about quality not trendiness. Downvotes on your comment are telling me that this is the new JS topic. Oh no.... :)

I think there are plenty of things to knock cloud based SaaS tools for but quality is a weird one - there are plenty of high quality cloud based solutions that can deliver high quality outputs.

Sorry, my english is not polished enough to express my point of view properly. I will try again. When I talk about quality it is in context applied to servicing my clients. In context of UX/UI and graphical design. When using a traditionally licensed software I own a tool. I can do my professional work with this tool and make a profit. New features add extra functionality and if I have a business case for this new functionality I can invest. But in most of use cases I can do my work with previous version with base functionality. Life cycle of graphic software must be long. Thats why I use Affinty software for design and avoid Adobe products. I know what my ROI is. My software is not bloated with background web services and notifications.

IDK if I'm the only one but figma feels lightyears away from sketch in snapiness, but the multiplayer features of figma are what give it the edge.

Agree, Figma is definitely slower, but Sketch has issues too when there are too many objects in the workspace. I think if Sketch made their performance 10x better, then I'd agree that native apps are better, but it's more like a 1.2x than a 10x.

Am I the only one that finds figma a little complicated to use (I mean, I didn't find it intuitive enough). But then again designing is not my job, I'm just a developer who thought of trying it after so many people praised it.

Figma user here, I wouldn't call it snappy. Feels just about the same as any other design tool I've used in the past (as a dev, consumer -- not the designer).

figma is pretty freaken amazing, and it works outside of macs. So overall there is nothing but upsides to it. Collaboration is amazing too. Just... No down sides.

> No down sides

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.

Figma have a free plan which works perfectly fine for my purposes (implementing designs given to me by designers, and very occasionally making my own).

Atrocious performance and memory usage. I have to always close tab after I'm done with Figma or laptop crawls.

Fan of Figma, but would switch to a better one in a heartbeat because of the following huge downside..

Once you are in Figma, you are trapped forever. No way to get out your original editable artwork files.

Buyer beware!

That goes for nearly all design software...

Not really.

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.

I thought “if you’re in the EU, make a GDPR request for your data”.

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.

even if they don't mention it, GDPR still applies and yours could be an interesting approach

This should be higher up! Is there really no way to get your original designs out of Figma? That's pretty damning. Wow.

There are paid 3rd-party tools to convert Figma to XD/Sketch and back, so you're not completely locked in. https://xd2sketch.com/

They have an API using which you get a json representation of your files. That is the same as sketch (whose file format is essentially zipped json files).

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