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

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

#161

Post by fyfy18 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

nikitaga wrote: post #138

Justsignedup wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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

#162

Post by danielrd » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

jonmy wrote: post #99

snarkypixel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design is a team sport, so what you need to ask yourself is does the whole team prefer to use a native mac app vs browser? RIP sketch

Meh, "design is a team sport" - great, everyone gets to jump in and play decorator and backseat drive. There are a lot of people with knives, but that doesn't make them a brain surgeon. My design team and myself will take the sanctity of a native app to create quality work any day versus a "design" free for all in the browser with everyone playing decorator.

Except teams benefits from Figma far more than on sketch. Design systems, plugins, multiplayer for holding critique/retros/planning, version control, etc put Figma far ahead of Sketch.

I manage a design team and there’s no way in hell we would go back to Sketch.

To even think that having a “native” app has any bearing isn’t accurate at all. Sketch is so slow compared to Figma. You aren’t using multiplayer everyday but when you do need it, there’s nothing like it.

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

#163

Post by csharpminor » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

thelittleone wrote: post #149

xyst wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem probably true ~4-5 years ago, but not so much today. Catalina broke a lot of apps (due to SIP?). Big Sur is likely to break even more existing apps. In one case, it was seen that Apple apps do not obey the same rules that third party developers must abide by ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816 ). I use a mbp at this point…

>> I use a mbp at this point because it's not Windows. Precisely the same. I used to be a big fan of the Apple ecosystem. When Jobs said the customer doesn't know what they need, he was usually right... he of course was a gifted visionary. Apple has continued with the same mindset but without the gifted visionary, in some cases with comical decisions e.g., keyboard, touchbar, soldering SSD to logic boards with high f…

The harder part of this proposal might be finding a visionary who could lead the effort.

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

#164

Post by sdoering » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

rado wrote: post #157

hombre_fatal wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a good example of the HN bubble which is one of the only places where "native macOS app" means anything to anybody. At least something more than "oh, I need to have a Macbook for that?" My girlfriend is a UX professional that does most of her work in Sketch. She doesn't care about macOS beyond the fact that it's required by the tools she has to use. I impulse-built an overpowered Windows machine earli…

Windows is broken spyware.

Well. Being in a corporate job (agency I work for got bought some years back and we need to have compliance with the corp requirements) I can say that my Mac and my Win devices have the same level of spyware. While at least on Windows every program (as far as I am aware) follows firewall rules without circumvention. Not so on a Mac were Apple tools like the store circumvent the firewall rules I set up [1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816

So I believe both platforms are problematic. Does Windows try to do way more data collection by default? Sadly yes. Is Mac without fault? Sadly no.

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

#165

Post by danielrd » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #41

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 sounds like hell to me as a designer.

It’s really not because multiplayer is there for walking through designs, leaving comments, or working with another designer. I work on a team of 10 and I don’t see anyone else in my designs unless I’m handing off to a dev or doing a review. At that point it’s amazing, as I can link anyone in our org a design and they can open it.

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

#166

Post by nbzso » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #107

pupdogg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.... :)

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

#167

Post by beshrkayali » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

rlt wrote: post #160

It seems like “pride” should be reserved for things like acting ethically, being environmentally friendly, treating employees well, making a positive impact on the world. 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.

It’s a nice idea to think that pride is about acting ethically like how you described, but technically, the definition is “a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements”. So as long as it’s not about something that they haven’t done themselves, they can feel proud of it.

They might not be able to compete with Figma, but to me personally, I definitely appreciate native apps way more than shells around web based one, which is why I prefer Sketch to Figma.

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

#168

Post by LegitShady » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

voodoomagicman wrote: post #118

JKCalhoun wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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

#169

Post by danielrd » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #134

CognitiveLens wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Collaboration doesn’t necessarily mean designing at the same time, it’s not really how any designers I know use it. It’s being able to walk through a design, leave comments, use it for quickly showing off an idea within a file, having another designer point you to a shared component/asset/prototype. We even use it for retrospectives and hangouts.

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

#170

Post by nbzso » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:51 AM UTC

snarkypixel wrote: post #67

eyelidlessness wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care about it, and if the software was available to buy I would pay a premium for it as I’ve done before. That’s why I landed on the Mac platform. In the “bad” old days, the only major developers were Mac die hards, and very little of the platform felt foreign or unconventional. Now, the only thing keeping me on the Mac platform is muscle memory and a few lucky (hardware) strikes.

Design is a team sport, so what you need to ask yourself is does the whole team prefer to use a native mac app vs browser? RIP sketch

First, to say Design is sport is stupid beyond comprehension, second, implementation and optimisation are not design. Decorate your apps and be happy, but please stop with this nonsense. Every design project has a starting concept, initial design idea generated from one person - the designer. One. Not team.