by milen on 10/27/20, 9:48 PM with 346 comments
by noen on 10/28/20, 5:58 AM
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.
by parhamn on 10/28/20, 1:54 AM
[1] https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to...
by yesimahuman on 10/27/20, 10:16 PM
I wouldn't die on that hill.
by statictype on 10/28/20, 1:33 AM
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.
by whoisjuan on 10/27/20, 10:54 PM
by robertoandred on 10/27/20, 10:14 PM
People uses Macs because they want to use Macs and software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem.
by dharma1 on 10/28/20, 7:12 AM
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.
by tomovo on 10/28/20, 10:20 AM
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.
by Naushad on 10/28/20, 6:10 AM
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.
by chrismsimpson on 10/28/20, 7:03 AM
by benfrain on 10/27/20, 10:09 PM
by fxtentacle on 10/27/20, 11:00 PM
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.
by koopuluri on 10/28/20, 2:35 AM
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.
by andrewmcwatters on 10/27/20, 10:51 PM
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.
by benhurmarcel on 10/28/20, 10:22 AM
Except the choice of using another brand of computer.
by phendrenad2 on 10/28/20, 4:50 AM
by kitsunesoba on 10/28/20, 2:11 AM
by weejewel on 10/27/20, 10:23 PM
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.
by bbx on 10/27/20, 10:45 PM
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.
by whywhywhywhy on 10/28/20, 11:09 AM
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.
by codazoda on 10/27/20, 11:02 PM
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.
by wmf on 10/27/20, 10:00 PM
by rlt on 10/28/20, 5:36 AM
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.
by chadlavi on 10/28/20, 2:09 AM
by bredren on 10/28/20, 2:42 AM
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.
by asien on 10/27/20, 10:24 PM
Users don’t care about native or not , they care only about innovation.
by etaioinshrdlu on 10/27/20, 10:14 PM
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 :)
by p0nce on 10/28/20, 2:28 AM
by devteambravo on 10/27/20, 10:45 PM
by siralonso on 10/28/20, 11:22 AM
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.
by sam_goody on 10/27/20, 11:01 PM
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
by sizzle on 10/28/20, 8:43 AM
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.
by illumanaughty on 10/28/20, 1:00 PM
by particulars02 on 10/28/20, 4:11 AM
by chrysoprace on 10/28/20, 1:10 AM
by ravivyas on 10/28/20, 7:06 AM
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.
by slmjkdbtl on 10/28/20, 6:59 AM
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.
by isodev on 10/28/20, 3:17 AM
by nbzso on 10/28/20, 2:32 AM
by dirtnugget on 10/28/20, 7:29 PM
by sgt on 10/28/20, 8:12 AM
by fareesh on 10/28/20, 5:58 AM
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.
by Razengan on 10/28/20, 12:31 PM
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.
by nipponese on 10/28/20, 1:15 AM
by mpurham on 10/27/20, 10:58 PM
It's frustrating sometime when you switch machines and software you've purchased for a machine is not available across multiple operating systems.
by perryizgr8 on 10/28/20, 5:23 AM
by yoz-y on 10/28/20, 9:19 AM
by metalforever on 10/28/20, 2:47 PM
by whatever_dude on 10/30/20, 12:31 PM
by vkaku on 10/28/20, 11:10 AM
But I feel sad that I won't ever get to try it. macOS (and eventually iOS) is dead to me as a platform.
by tincholio on 10/28/20, 5:56 PM
by jpkeisala on 10/28/20, 6:44 AM
by michelb on 10/28/20, 11:55 AM
by bsradcliffe on 10/28/20, 3:19 PM
by qppo on 10/27/20, 10:04 PM
by maxdo on 10/28/20, 2:35 AM
by orthecreedence on 10/28/20, 3:17 AM
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.