Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App • Hacker News Board

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#131

Post by cawlin » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:01 AM UTC

isodev wrote: post #124

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, and I think this is a pretty good signal that Sketch is REALLY feeling the heat from Figma, because they aren't offering a better argument besides "we're native". The bandwagon has clearly jumped off Sketch and onto Figma, and not because it's "fashionable", but because Figma is plain awesome.

Figma is not a viable alternative if you're anything but a digital designer. 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.

Is Sketch doing anything for print? I haven't used it for a few years now and back then it was digital only.

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#132

Post by valuearb » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:01 AM UTC

marrone12 wrote: post #37

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, and I think this is a pretty good signal that Sketch is REALLY feeling the heat from Figma, because they aren't offering a better argument besides "we're native". The bandwagon has clearly jumped off Sketch and onto Figma, and not because it's "fashionable", but because Figma is plain awesome.

Yep. Our company switched to Figma and it's been leaps and bounds better for productivity. Having multiple people working on the same design file at the same time has been huge.

But it’s been a worse experience for your mobile developers.

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#133

Post by valuearb » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #38

outworlder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's clear users in general don't care about an app being pure Mac OS controls/SDKs/etc. 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 tha…

VS.Code users aren't exactly casual users and in the main are happy enough to use it as their main coding interface many hours per day (and yes I understand that this is HN so now there will be a bunch of people saying "I'm not happy).

It’s a huge mixed bag. Great and terrible at same time.

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#134

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:06 AM UTC

CognitiveLens wrote: post #4

wmf wrote: post #2

Is this attempting to throw some shade on Figma to counteract lost sales?

Presumably - Sketch is great software, well built, but the fact that in late 2020 they still have to write "And soon, the ability to collaborate in real-time" is the the best counter-argument to building native for me personally.

This is somewhat orthogonal, but I don’t understand the draw of real-time collaboration.

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?

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#135

Post by cawlin » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #25

AsyncAwait wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sketch is not libre software, so there's not much difference as long as you can export.

There is a whole world of difference. Figma's servers can be down when you need it to work, developers might want to 'phase out' the function you need, or introduce some changes that would totally break your workflow, and you will be absolutely powerless to do anything about it but conform. With locally running app you control when and where the app works, and you have way more options when developer introduces some…

Meh. I can't open any of our old sketch files at work because I don't have a valid license for a version that works on the newest OS. All the same as being locked out of a server in the moment.

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#136

Post by particulars02 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

The majority of the benefits seem to be for developers, not for customers. Effectively-free features like tool bars, file dialogs, and right-click lookups sure are nice to not have spend development hours on. However, as a customer...how does that matter to me?

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#137

Post by notsureaboutpg » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #65

untog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People uses Macs because they want to use Macs and software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem 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…

> What does keep me on Macs is that every now and then I need to compile an iOS app. 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 als…

I also wish this.

I have been getting by using a family member's machine to build iOS apps on, but if I were just on Mac to build iOS apps every now and then, I'd be complaining about Mac all day online honestly.

It's just not my cup of tea. Like water and oil together, but I'm sure for some people it's everything they want in a computer

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#138

Post by nikitaga » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

Justsignedup wrote: post #121

parhamn wrote: post #85

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...

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.

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#139

Post by notsureaboutpg » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

koopuluri wrote: post #102

I believe users don't actually care about the Native only features, and rather they care more about producing great designs, through a delightful process, in effective collaboration with their teammates. As opposed to focusing on how Sketch tackles these bigger picture user goals, they talk about their love for Native apps, with contrived examples: what percentage of users actually care about using the OSX dictionary…

Yep, this is obvious by how many more regular people use Canva to create a simple flyer than use Photoshop or GIMP or any other similar tool.

Re: Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

#140

Post by nikitaga » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:25 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #71

marrone12 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Our company switched to Figma and it's been leaps and bounds better for productivity. Having multiple people working on the same design file at the same time has been huge.

This isn't a property of native apps or web apps. 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 all but requires being online (good offline collab is much harder to implement as you surely know), so that eliminates one of the main advantages of native apps.

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.