Sketch 3 released | Hacker News Reader

Sketch 3 released

bohemiancoding.com

212 pointsjrnkntl125 comments

I LOVE Sketch, but I the two issues I have with it are:

First, text is buggy when at an extreme size: [1][2]

To view it properly I have to resize or slightly move my canvas and it somehow "refreshes" the view.

Second, there is a huge lack of support and little to no tutorials on Sketch. It's also hard to Google any problems because it's called... Sketch.

I find it ridiculous I have to shell another $50 / $80 for a new version. Just give me an upgrade for $25.

Also, for any iOS designers, I highly suggest buying Sketch mirror: [3]

You can preview your designs live on your iOS device and move through different screens, live, while you design. This, and then using LiveReload to code mockups is super efficient and fun.

[1] http://cl.ly/image/0g3y1w3i3Y3m

[2] http://cl.ly/image/3z3k0x2J151s

[3] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketch-mirror/id677296955?mt...

Astonishes me they couldn't even give 50% off as introductory price.

Why would it "astonish" you? There's probably a sound business reason behind it. It's a small software house, just some guys trying to make a living.

I was actually referring to the actual price ($80) and the introductory price ($50). Remember Coda 2? Everyone with Coda 1 had to pay 50% off to upgrade. "Half" is a common upgrade price, 62.5% isn't. This example may not convince you, but I'm sure you can find others more fit.

Weeks before the release they had to reply tweets regarding if it would be a paid upgrade and they said "they would only know in the release". This bothered me the most, we could all be told previously that it would be a paid upgrade at least.

Also, their reply doesn't sound like they had a solid business strategy at all.

Of course, I already bought Sketch 3, it doesn't mean I can't be frustrated by how they handled the whole thing. I just hope they learn the lesson for Sketch 4.

App Store makes paid upgrades difficult. And $50 sounds better to me than $349.

Here are some great resources if you are getting started - http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/resources/

Are you seriously saying it isn't worth $50?

I think it is. As somebody who JUST bought the last version, it'd still be nice to get cut a break on an upgrade.

If you just bought the last version, you are entitled to a free upgrade.

http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/support/faq/01-purchasing-s...

I'm not made of money. I JUST bought it (before March). Now I have to pay again, a cost I did not foresee. I also have lots of other software I need to pay for, so yeah, $50 is quite a hit to the pocket for me.

Same - I bought it on 10th Feb, and their cutoff date for getting a free upgrade is 1st March, not even 20 days later. I emailed to ask if they'd let me through anyway or allow me to pay a discounted price some other way, and they fairly curtly told me nope. (I guess the brevity is due to a high volume of requests, but still felt a bit rude)

Worth noting I am not a professional designer. This is a hobby purchase - so yes, being hit with an extra $50 expense a month and a half after deciding to splurge and buy the thing feels harsh.

You're not hit with a $50 expense. You have exactly what you paid for, and you can wait as long as you like to decide if you want what is on offer in the upgrade.

Also, what relevance is the 20 days figure? You owned the product for 63 days before the upgrade was released.

> Also, what relevance is the 20 days figure? You owned the product for 63 days before the upgrade was released.

The cutoff date for getting version 3 for free is 1st March.

Right, but you've owned the product for more than 2 months. If they moved the cutoff date to 63 days, there would be still people saying 'but I was only 20 days before the cutoff', and so on ad infinitum.

How far away from the cutoff you were is irrelevant. What is relevant is how soon after your purchase the upgrade was made available.

Nobody is making you pay again. You have what you paid for and can freely choose to spend your money on the other software that is more important to you than this upgrade.

About your text issue: The only time I've ever seen that happening is when the line height is considerably smaller than the actual text size. Sometimes when resizing text Sketch will not scale the line spacing accordingly. Maybe not your issue but I thought I'd share.

I see the text/view bug occasionally but restarting the program usually fixes the problem for me.

About the tutorials. Sketch is simple enough to get a grasp without any resources but there are some features that are buried. I recommend this site:

http://www.sketchappsources.com/tutorials-tips.html

Also when Googling, "Sketch App" does the trick.

In case anyone else was looking for this: Sketch 3 is not a free upgrade like Sketch 2 was. If you bought Sketch 2 after March 31 you get Sketch 3. For everybody else, there's no upgrade license, you have to get the full version even if you own Sketch 2.

The price is $50 until until April 21, then it'll be $80.

Source: http://bohemiancoding.tumblr.com/post/82681566874/sketch-3-i...

For me the Mac app store (non US) still shows Sketch 2, so I'm assuming there's some caches that need to expire before everyone will be able to see it.

Developers should start prorating upgrade costs instead of setting arbitrary cutoff dates for free upgrades to recent purchasers.

So if you release V1 on Jan 1 2013 and I buy it July 2 2013, I should get the V2 you release Jan 1 2014 for half price. Likewise, someone who buys on Jan 31 2013 should get V2 for 11/12 full price, and someone who buys on Oct 1 2013 should get it for 1/4 full price, etc.

This is in the developer's interest because it discourages people from waiting to buy if they expect a paid upgrade release soon and it leads to fewer requests for free upgrades from people who "just missed" the free upgrade window, for several values of "just missed."

It's also just fair and nice.

That's basically a subscription model, no? Say USD80/12mo makes ~USD6.99/mo. I'm still not sure how I feel about renting software. Even though I feel that's where our industry is heading with the app stores and their restrictive pricing model.

Well, the issue many people have with renting software is that they can’t continue using it after they stop paying.

With what the grandparent proposed you wouldn’t have to upgrade, you could just continue using the old version.

No, because users choose to upgrade and own the version they bought outright. You would also have different pricing for new users vs upgraders still, so you'd have the big up front bump from new users.

As you mention, some users don't like the "service" model, so you could present options along these lines (scale values to fit your product):

$120/yr ($10/mo) as a service, or... $150 to buy now with free minor upgrades and $100 (or scale to be fair for the magnitude of the upgrade) prorated major upgrades.

So I can choose to pay more up front and maybe save a little bit of money in the long run if I choose to keep upgrading, but definitely have access to the software I bought and am familiar with even if I decide I don't use it enough to keep upgrading.

I think this would also lead to a lot of users grabbing a subscription to try out the software who wouldn't have otherwise.

From there of of four things is likely to happen:

1) They decide they don't like it and end their subscription quickly. Since it was cheap, they don't feel cheated and are less likely to smear your brand.

2) They like it and are lazy/preoccupied/like-the-convenience, so they keep the subscription.

3) They like it enough they decide to buy a license so they can save some money long term with upgrades and have more freedom with how they use it.

4) They're not sure if they'll use it enough to justify a continued subscription. If they need it enough, they buy a license without planning to upgrade as a compromise. Maybe they'll decide to upgrade later. If they're not sure, they drop the subscription and maybe buy a month at a time when they need it in the future (you can encourage more frequent users not to do this by offering a 20-25% discount to prepay a year for the service).

Monolithic desktop software like this would pull in more users and revenue with flexible rent/buy options.

I'm also more confident that you're motivated to keep pushing out big meaningful upgrades if you have users that you actually actively have to convince to buy them over what they already have.

> That's basically a subscription model, no?

Not really. A subscription model means the software stops working when you stop paying. @entrode's pro-rating idea is just more granular about how much of a rebate you get off the next version.

It usually means that, but not necessarily. Unreal Engine 4 does a $20/month subscription where you can stop paying at any time and just keep using the version you have.

Maybe they do that because it would be impossible to enforce anything else (paying one month gets you the full source code), but it's still great that the license allows it.

I quite like the model where you get a year of major updates but can continue using the software after the year ends.

Seems to be popular with making developer tools for some reason. MonoTouch, RubyMotion and Apportable all use it, for example.

Perhaps they are doing something reasonable knowing that developers inevitably want to play with the new hotness and will upgrade.

I watch the phpstorm/pycharm EAP's like a hawk as they are constantly adding stuff that will make me hand over money :).

They'll keep updating, OK. But there's no backwards compatibility in the new format.

Sketch 2 can't open Sketch 3 files.

Somehow you're forced to update if you intent to keep using Sketch.

That's orthogonal to the pricing model. Same issue with pay-to-upgarade.

I suspect that's not supported by the app store. An initial discount seems like a reasonable work-around.

The issue is that Apple's App Store limits the options for a software manufacturer. The App Store is attractive, but it does not give you a path to paid upgrades. They had to choose, and they chose this option.

Exactly. I actually think the way they handle upgrades for users who bought after March 1 was clever. Those users get a non-MAS key that works. I also think that $50 is more than fair for this upgrade.

Nothing prevents them from having a downloadable version independent of the AppStore.

Just a brief correction - the upgrade cutoff is March 1 - See here: http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/support/faq/01-purchasing-s...

I'm kind of bummed. I bought Sketch 2 February 2014. I doubt that they are going to give me a free upgrade or a reduced cost upgrade.

I've always wanted to try Sketch after reading so much positive praise. But I'm on Windows and I doubt the Sketch team have the resources (or interest) in producing a Windows version.

For those of us on Windows looking for an alternative to Adobe Illustrator, here are two possibilities. Neither of these match Illustrator feature-for-feature, but they're perfectly capable for designing interfaces or web graphics.

Inkscape: free, open source and cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux). It holds up well against Illustrator and can produce professional-looking results. If you're familiar with other vector drawing apps, the interface won't feel too intimidating. If you're a complete newbie, it might take a little while to learn the interface. Downsides: It doesn't do multi page layouts (not an issue for everyone). It doesn't feel like a native windows app and can be slow at times with large or complex drawings. Some of the dialogs are cluttered and not always clearly laid out. There are tutorials on the web (and books) but nowhere near the volume you'll find for Illustrator.

http://www.inkscape.org/en/

Xara Photo and Graphics designer: Windows only ($90/£70). This is fast (faster than Illustrator) and well featured. The interface in my opinion is better than Illustrator in many respects. For example, to add a drop shadow, simply drag out a shadow from a shape. In Illustrator, it's done non-interactively via a modal pop-up dialog box. You can create multi page layouts (much easier than Illustrator's clumsy artboard management). Downsides: like inkscape, it has an enthusiastic community of users but nowhere near the number of learning resources as Illustrator. It produces anti-aliased images but for web graphics this can sometimes be problematic because the anti-aliasing is applied to straight lines too (so you sometimes get slightly blurry straight edges rather than crisp ones). Illustrator has solved this with its "align to pixel grid" option.

There is a free trial of the program available

http://www.xara.com/uk/photo-graphic-designer/

There's really no "I doubt…" about it. From the FAQ:

"Is Sketch available for Windows or Linux

Sketch relies on a lot of technology that is exclusive to OS X and the fact that no other OS provide a clear business model for software development, we're not considering supporting it."

http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/support/faq/02-general/5-wi...

I would guess its mostly because CoreGraphics would make writing this kind of application relatively easy.

I think WPF would be the same on Windows.

I'm surprised they consider OS X to be a good platform from a business model perspective. How can you build a sustainable software business without paid feature upgrades? The first review of Sketch 3 on the store is an underserved one star complaining about the way they've handled the transition to Sketch 3.

The app store model works fine for throwaway impulse purchases but that seems like that's about it. Per-unit prices seem to be racing to the bottom the same way they did in the iOS app store too.

You release a new version as a new app and your users buy it again, if they want to. It does away with 'upgrade pricing', but the idea is you just reduce the base price of the app to compensate so there's a slightly lower price for new purchasers, but a slightly higher price for upgrades. It's a different simpler pricing model, but not an inherently un-viable one.

This is nice enough in theory but in practice it doesn't seem to work out so well. Just look at the ridiculous backlash the developers of Clear suffered when they had the temerity to charge $2 for a major update.

You're also penalized in search results and app rankings if you have several distinct apps scattered through the store instead of one app with a long history of reviews and updates.

Given the thousands of products in the App Store that do quite well (and given that Sketch 3 was the highest grossing app in the App Store yesterday) I think your examples are anecdotal at best.

Unfortunately, I can not recommend inkscape on the Mac. Their last official release (0.48.2) was Sep 6, 2011. For a long time the team didn't seem to have the resources / know-how to get a release built for Mac.

There has been someone working on it to some degree, on and off, but it requires a lot of work. Meanwhile the 0.48.2 release is very buggy, which is what Mac users have been using for years.

I would have to see proof of renewed dedication and follow through, over a period of time, before I recommended inkscape for mac again. This is why I have been considering Sketch, but in dismay found Sketch to be buggy also.

For those of you who have the latest Sketch2, here are the major improvements:

1) Symbols - Group of objects that will sync. Although I prefer Unity3D's prefab approach, it will be useful.

2) Export tool is soo much better. Especially multiple size format. No longer just 1x or 2x.

3) Bitmap editing. No longer have to open PS for cropping/editing.

4) Vector modes is in UI. No more click/trial/error.

There are other small ones but these are the main advantages.

In my opinion if you are a professional its definitely worth an upgrade. But for hobbyist like me, these new features are not worth the jump.

Another example where the lack of upgrade-pricing in the App Store is infuriating. I'd cheerfully pay a $20 upgrade fee, but it's a tad much to pay more than I paid for the original app for some minor UI enhancements.

  2) Export tool is soo much better. Especially multiple size format. No longer just 1x or 2x.

This finally makes Sketch a viable tool for Android design as well.

Useful app that I use in web design production a lot. I hope version 3 gets rid of some of the annoyances (e.g. weird behavious and crashes after long use). A more detailed changelog would be great.

Most annoying thing hasn't changed though: the name. It makes it really hard to get relevant Google results when searching for bugs, features etc.. Adding "bohemian coding" helps sometimes, as does adding "app" (but less so). Would have liked to see "Bohemian Sketch" or "Sketch BC" or something alike.

Let's complete my wishlist with a discount for upgraders (a.k.a. the biggest fans).

Anyways, will very likely continue using it, no matter how it's called. And the price is still very competitive compared to Adobe's Photoshop and/or Illustrator.

Just in case you haven't seen it, http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/whats-new/

I didn't, thanks!

Watch out! the link on the home page goes to the older version. I just bought the more expensive version 2 when. (In my excitement it never occurred to me that they didn't update the link and also I am a moron.)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1083020/sketch3.mp4

here is the correct link --> https://fnd.io/#/mac-app/852320343-sketch-3-by-bohemian-codi...

FYI, Apple does allow refunds for accidental purchases like this. IIRC, submit a "Problem with this order" under your account settings.

They sure do. You can also go to reportaproblem.apple.com to request a refund, for the record.

oh, I did that first thing (then bought the correct one) and I've already gotten the refund.

I'm disappointed that even modern applications have poor PNG compression.

With pngquant (--quality=95) and ImageOptim I'm able to make Sketch's "Exported for web" files literally 3 times smaller.

I see the exact same with .png images exported (as web files) from Fireworks. The size reduction varies though—it's not always a 3x reduction with Fireworks. I'm guessing they are both storing a lot of non-image data inside the .png files even though I haven't peeled any of them open to see.

How does pngquant compare to pngcrush?

And are you not able add this as a build step?

pngquant & pngcrush >= pngcrush

pngquant changes pixels in the image, which gives it freedom to make files much, much smaller than the completely lossless pngcrush can (60-70% vs 10-30%). pngquant-converted files can still be pngcrushed to make them even smaller.

> are you not able add this as a build step?

I am, but I think it's a shame that it's needed. I think users should be able to trust that their apps produce good output in the first place, and not need to hook up 3rd party tools to compress the files well.

What ever happened to "Small tools that do one thing well"?

ImageOptim is extremely well-known in the industry. I'd much rather the developers of my vector drawing tool focus on making a great vector drawing tool, and let [you] obsess over making the best image compression tools. It's not just as simple as just bundling pngquant into the export process. You also have to make an effective UI that implicitly explains to users, "You know that lossless PNG image format you love? Well, here's a slider to make it do lossy compression!"

My preference would be, don't even have an Export For Web option. Or if you do have it, just make it link to ImageOptim!

(Edit: Didn't realize who I was responding to. My team loves and lives by ImageOptim and ImageAlpha — thank you for them! Even if Sketch had better PNG export, we'd still be using your tools as part of our development process to deal with all the other programs that don't get it right.)

> What ever happened to "Small tools that do one thing well"?

That's nice in the Unix world, but I think in the OS X land the motto is "it just works".

I'm glad you use ImageOptim and ImageAlpha, but please obsolete my tools :)

I think of them as a stopgap/bugfix for other tools that don't compress well themselves.

Reusable Symbols like Fireworks! I really do hope they keep picking up the good parts of Fireworks and create a dedicated, high quality screen design tool. Because there is none at the moment.

Seems to be caching old version of the website for some locations.

https://twitter.com/marciplan/status/455694272487251968/phot... is how the new website must look like. I still get the old version regardless of how many times I refresh.

Could someone with a new page post the itunes url for Sketch 3 so I can check the minimum reqs if it's still 10.7? (I'm on OS X 10.7.5 and not all apps support it these days..)

10.8 or later.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketch/id852320343?mt=12

I just checked out Sketch. I suppose I should give it the benefit of the doubt but ...

First thing I did was change a font on the intro doc. 2 other places changed (that was the point). Then picked Undo. It only undid my change, not the 2 others that it auto applied.

Next thing I did was open the iOS Icon template. I made a circle, set it to gradient fill, dragged the handle of the fill direction, got residual garbage all over.

http://imgur.com/ucl4aVF

Not a good first impression. Should I be more forgiving?

I have not seen those issues and i am a long time user, file a bug report, they are quick to fix things like this.

Do Pixelmator and Sketch 3 complement one another? I already use Pixelmator and love it.

Unless mistaken, Pixelmator is like Adobe Photoshop and Sketch 3 is like Adobe Illustrator?

I'm wondering the same thing. Is Pixelmator + Sketch the best indie alternative to Photoshop + Illustrator?

Probably. Pixelmator is awesome but drawing objects with it is still not great.

If you're looking for something to use for more traditional Illustrator purposes (graphics, identity design, illustration), you might want to look into iDraw, which is less UI-focused than Sketch, though both are quite powerful indie Illustrator replacements.

Pixelmator makes sense if you're actually working with photos, but just like Photoshop, I wouldn't recommend it for UI design.

I think Pixelmator is an excellent replacement for Photoshop, but right now Sketch is more of a replacement for Fireworks than Illustrator in my experience.

Can Pixelmator actually do smudging now? It's the main that kept me with GIMP instead.

Yep: http://www.pixelmator.com/tutorials/retouching/smudge-tool/

Personally, I prefer Acorn to Pixelmator. It's on sale for a limited time: http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

One of the very few and highly rare occasions I am jealous of Mac users. As a Windows user who used to religiously use Adobe Fireworks for all facets of web design, I am very jealous that Mac users have a decent alternative to Fireworks after it was discontinued last year.

I think there is a big gap in the market for a company (whether that be Bohemian Coding or not) to create a program like Sketch for Windows. I read somewhere a little while ago that there won't be a Sketch for Windows any time soon, but still holding on to the hope that one day there'll be something at least like it for Windows. Sketch 3 looks fantastic.

Well I don't qualify for the free upgrade and I don't know if I want to pay for it. The fact is that Sketch 2 is a buggy mess!! I sent a bunch of bug reports to them and all they were saying I'll like the next major release and it will be fixed. Don't waste your time with Sketch just download Inkscape and you'll be good to go. I am probably moving back to it as well.

I wonder if it still does the stupid duplicate functionality that S2 did which was totally unlike the past 30 years of drawing program functionality. I really wanted to like S2 but this turned me off from using it. I guess it will cost $49 to find out.

I wish Apple would allow trial versions but I know why they don't. It doesn't matter to them.

There's a big "Download Free Trial" button at the bottom of the page.

Edit: Which includes version 2.4.3, rather than 3.0. Doh. Still, it looks like Bohemian does intend to offer a demo version.

That button already downloaded version 3 for me, so it’s worth a try.

It looks to have been fixed, Just installed the 3.0 trial from their website.

We have been evaluating a number of wireframing tools for iOS development over the last few weeks.

Having only played for 3.0 for 20mins, along with this stencil > http://www.teehanlax.com/tools/iphone-sketch-app/ (just need them to convert to the new Stencil) its pretty good. Best I have found so far.

I was about to start work with Omnigraffle which we had ended up with, but looks like I will be buying Sketch 3.0 end of today if no problems. We also tried Brief (http://giveabrief.com/) which concept wise is amazing but its not ready for prime time yet.

Photoshop was the other way, but unless you are a PS master just slow workflow.

I like OG for a lot of simple things, but it's not really designed for fancy graphics but I do use it.

You can download a 14 day trial version directly on the linked page.

In general you should always check the website of the developer before blindly buying a Mac app in the App Store. Especially if the apps are costly (well, not exactly costly, just apps that cost as much as apps used to cost before this current price implosion) the developers tend to offer a trial version.

Just out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean when talking about the duplicate functionality?

Duplicating objects doesn't respect grids like everything since MacDraw has done. It just sticks the new object on top of the original. Their grids aren't normal, more of a way to produce a grid of objects rather than a snap tool. Normally I would draw something, duplicate it, drag to a new location; now every duplicate command produces a new copy the same distance you just moved the second one. It makes it quick to lay out objects and then customize them. Almost every other app does it the MacDraw way, so it irritated me no end.

I guess I will get a trial and try it out.

Just downloaded the demo version and got this: http://cl.ly/image/161S1B0d1j3E Also, the App Store is still selling Sketch 2, nor is there anything about v3 on their website.

How do I get the new version and the list of improvements?

I found v3 on the App Store by going to the Sketch 2 page and noticed "More by Bohemian Coding" on the right side had a link to the Sketch 3 app store page.

One thing I was expecting to see fixed in the next major Sketch version is accuracy of resizing vector shapes. Suppose I have a big vector icon (or outlined text-logo), and want to scale it down. When I do this in Sketch, the scaled down version looks crippled.

Use the scale button to resize vectors to a radically different size. It will resize you borders and shadows correctly. Or Edit > Scale. By default you don't want you shape boarder size changing when you resize. So sketch uses the scale button to fix this. Awesome.

I am a big fan of Sketch. That said, I really hope they give some discount for upgrade.

It's already discounted right now. It's only $50. The normal price is already pretty reasonable at $80.

That's launch pricing, not upgrade pricing.

Anyone know if you can open a multiple artboard .ai file with Sketch? Well, it opened, but I can only see the first artboard. Hoping I'm missing an option somewhere?

Export .ai files to PDF and then you can open it with Sketch.

Please stop complaining about having to pay $50 for an upgrade. That wouldn't even get you 2 months adobe subscription. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade.

Sketch is by far the best UI design application out there.

Is this a good replacement for Illustrator? I need something that allows me to edit and create vector logos, etc.

The other option I'm looking at is iDraw.

very good replacement and deceptively advanced.

They still haven't fixed the "Set Style as Default" bug for fills on the vector tool.

How does Sketch compare to Photoshop for web design and mobile design?

It's incomparable - in that Sketch is far better prepared for it. Photoshop has never been aimed at that, any the ways people make it happen are sort of 'hacks' they discovered to get to what they need to do.

Sketch has been developed from the ground up as a Screen design tool, and it shows.

Sketch is more of a replacement for Fireworks than Photoshop, as in its purely a vector design tool and therefore much better suited to web design. I never really understood why so many people used Photoshop for that task.

If you're looking for a replacement for Photoshop though id recommend Pixelmator.

It mentions it's for mobile design and talks in general terms, but I'm getting a sense it's limited to just iOS? Is there support for Android?

It's just drawing software, you can use it to design whatever you like. But it does happen to come with some useful presets for iOS app design

The mobile design you do in Sketch is of course not limited to any platform. However, I think you're refering to the companion app Sketch Mirror [1] that shows live changes to your design on your phone; that one is iOS only.

[1] http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/features/#mirror

I wasn't referring to Sketch Mirror, but Sketch itself. But thanks for the clarification. It just seemed very iOS centric, and while I understood Mirror was a specific feature itself, it reinforced the notion of iOS only. But thanks for clarifying. I'm glad I asked.

Sketch Mirror, the app that let's you mirror the contents from Sketch (Mac) is iOS only, so in that sense you're limited to Apple devices. However, you can use Sketch to design anything from apps (desktop, mobile, web), websites to PDFs to PPT presentations.

Just tried Sketch 3: in some ways it is now even more iOS centric (now has iOS templates out of the box), but the multiple (export) resolution support is a major improvement for Android (previously it just offered 1x, 2x which was completely useless for Android).

I've used Sketch 2 a lot for Android work; it is fantastic and I highly recommend it, though I wish they would give first class support to Android. However, I imagine the developers have to worry about how Apple might react (maybe less likely to get featured etc).

Meh, Mac.

While your brief comment will probably be downvoted to oblivion I too am wishing there was a Sketch for Windows. With Fireworks being canned, I'm worried about what tool I'll use next for web design.

"Fireworks being canned" what?!?!?

Fireworks is being discontinued

http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/05/06/yes-adobe-is-killing-fir...

Fireworks has been killed. Since like a year or so.

Adobe just still offers CS6, to eventually kill, and has never upgraded it to CC.

http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks/2013/05/the-future-of-adobe...

"Meh, Mac"? What are you, 12?

I am someone who does not get excited about software that's limited to a platform I don't use.

Great. How did you think your comment would contribute anything to the discussion?

I suppose in the same manner that yours did. I understand now that opinions are not welcome here; I will strive to limit my future comments to verifiable facts.

"Meh, Mac" isn't really an opinion though.

Aaaaaaaand BOUGHT :D

Pah, another iterative upgrade with a hefty price tag...

$50 is hefty?

For a non professional who has no business need for the tool, yes.

Then again, those are not the target market.

If you have no business need for the tool, then it is presumably for hobby or entertainment use.

So it is comparable with entertainment products or other professional tools used by hobbyists.

$50 doesn't buy many hours of entertainment in movies. Video games are better value for money. Fishing rods, woodworking tools, knitting supplies. Compared to these things $50 seems like a low end expense.

What were you comparing it to?

Thanks, great comment. I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed when a small company brings out a great software product, and I find a topic with lots of complaints related to its price.

Yes, it is hefty, because I already paid for Sketch 2 and I still remember the time when Apple was peacocking that "buying from the AppStore you get the future updates for free"

I'd be curious to know if you have a citation showing that Apple ever made this claim.

You can't stay in business selling one version of your software to customers long term. If you can't stay in business then there are no new features and the product dies. I understand when laypeople don't understand the software business, but you expect more from the development community.

For someone paying Adobe $50/mo for Creative Suite, $50 one-time for a tool that does 90% of what I use Photoshop for doesn't seem outrageous.

Hey - remember when $50 was what you expected to pay for any kind of boxed software? It used to just be the baseline! Free and $.99 apps have ruined people's expectations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com