Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

macOS runs only on Apple Hardware. Perhaps things are different in countries where the laws are somewhat pro-consumer, but in poorer parts of the world, Apple is allowed to get away with operating pretty much like a criminal enterprise.

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.

I think if you only use XCode and really get used to it through and through, it could be a good tool. But it is so unintuitive it's staggering, and does not have terribly advanced features for an IDE.

What Sketch is doing in the post is marketing their constraint as their strength.

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.

I think they need at least a live Web preview too, and cover all of Figma‘s other functionality.

I just suck it up and adopt the tooling required by customer's IT, on private laptops I use Sublime instead, and pay for it.

And I dream the day that React Native for Windows/Mac team at Microsoft manages to force a VSCode rewrite.