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Sketch: Proud to Build a Truly Native Mac App

sketch.com

261–270 of 362 posts

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

#261
I've been a Sketch user longer than most, think I started around V2 when Adobe discontinued Fireworks.

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.

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

#263
post #250

"And thank you, Apple, for giving us a place to call home." 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 li…

It's their way of sucking up to Apple to be featured in the next WWDC as a prime example of first-party software.

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

#264
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This does not make any sense, newer versions of Sketch open old files just fine, and licences are valid for any version.

Maybe you were trying to say that you can't open new sketch files because your version of macOS doesn't support latest versions of Sketch? That is, indeed, a problem. However, if you work only with internal files, you can simply abstain from upgrading to new version and keep working on the version that works for you. Moreover, Sketch licences do not 'expire', you simply can't receive updates any longer. So you can still work with your files as long as you need, not relying on someone else's actions.

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

#265
post #250

"And thank you, Apple, for giving us a place to call home." 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 li…

They are not stuck, they are just being smart. All multi-platform tools are of lower fidelity and disjointed tooling, making it a horrible experience for a developer and a much lesser one for the user. When was the last time you saw a designed without a Mac? Adobe is sherlocking Sketch the same way MS is copying Slack. You really want each and every app on your PC to come with a full Node runtime? That is worse even than the infamous DLL-hell from the past. Enjoy it, I won't.

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

#266
post #99

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.

Definitely agree these sort of tools only help you if you have a functioning team, but this goes across everything. Had a manager come close to what I would consider bullying in my Google Docs before, would have been a complete nightmare using Figma with him, I would have outright refused to use it.

But if your team itself is functioning well and has respect for each others input it works well.

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

#267
These two things are simultaneously true:

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.

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

#268
post #250

"And thank you, Apple, for giving us a place to call home." 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 li…

It's their way of sucking up to Apple to be featured in the next WWDC as a prime example of first-party software.

I don't think they will be ever featured, because they left AppStore and are selling their software directly, without paying Apple Tax.

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

#269

I respect them for sticking to this, but I think it's a mistake. It's clear users in general don't care about an app being pure Mac OS controls/SDKs/etc. and their claims about it being a truly superior UX are unfounded (having used both regularly, Figma disproves that heavily). With this, Sketch isn't available on Windows nor the web (until very recently it seems?). I wouldn't die on that hill.

A lot of Mac users do. We chose the platform because of it, among other things. I hate that WhatsApp, Skype and other crap Electron apps that I’m forced to use because of other people can’t do simple things like propor multi language spell checking that macOS has had since day one and that every other app gets for free.

I consider the built in spell check to be of the greatest features of MacOS and I'm furious when apps either change the way their inputs work so you lose the feature or even worse add their own dumbed down bespoke solution in it's place.

Worth noting Sketch broke spell check many versions back around the time I stopped using it.

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

#270
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

> plugins

Seeing you write this, a doubt creeps that you ever used Sketch.

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