Sketch – Part of your world: Why we’re proud to build a truly native Mac app | Hacker News Reader

Sketch – Part of your world: Why we’re proud to build a truly native Mac app

sketch.com

33 pointsrobenkleene19 comments

This blog post is obviously directed at Figma (and perhaps to the less successful InVision Studio).

I used Sketch for many years and now I work with a team that uses Figma.

I agree with all the blog post arguments. While Figma is an impressive engineering effort for a web app, the performance differences are huge.

But, what is “killing” Sketch and other native apps is the sharing use case. Figma is still ahead of Sketch Cloud for sharing and collaboration.

The Figma rest API also helps to improve the design/dev workflow. I did tools for Sketch and Figma to extract icons into React components. While the Sketch CLI helps, the Figma API is portable and easier to use — handling stdout and files vs doing simple Rest calls.

I see the same trend with other native apps. I love Keynote and I hate Google Slides with all my heart (who thought that was a good idea to use the scroll gesture to move to the next slide in the editor!?). But, the last week I had to collaborate in a presentation and Keynote collab crashed all the time... it felt like going back to the 2000: sharing files with version numbers and notes to not overlap our work. Suddenly the sharing use case became so painful, that I was more open to work in a limited tool like GSlides.

BTW: I love macOS native apps, but if Apple doesn’t fix the collaboration use case, the browser apps are going to eat them... like Google Docs did with Word.

Sketch is a great app. It's a shame that it's Mac native, I had to stop using it when they killed off support for High Sierra.

I wouldn't be proud of building on an increasingly user and developer hostile platform, but thats just me.

> For us, the ultimate benefit of being a native macOS app is that it puts the choice in your hands.

That's... kind of a weird opinion but all the power to you. I have never felt like "choice" was a core value of Sketch, since it doesn't give me the choice to run on my hardware or software versions. But thanks for letting me own my own data.

Why use sketch at all anymore now that we have figma? It's browser based, so cross platform and it does everything sketch does for free.

Because it's slow and difficult to use compared to sketch. Plus I need my files on my drive 100% of the time and routinely work without reliable network access.

I get kind of why Figma is popular, it solves issues with sharing and collaboration. But the day to day usage is crippled by the fact it's in a browser and not a standalone app where I need it to have total control over keybindings and shortcuts for my workflow. Meanwhile in the browser, hijacking that behavior is a UX antipattern.

Sketch is just so much less cumbersome than Figma it's not even funny. It's easier to use than illustrator and Xd too.

Ok that's fair. To add an opposing viewpoint, I've never noticed any slowdown with figma for the stuff I do. Then again, I don't use keybindings.

Try Lunacy (on the MS Store) it's impressive: is basically Sketch for windows, free

Good for them staying native and not getting caught in a least-common denominator Electron hell.

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

Hmm, I wonder if this post is a subtle dig at Figma - their main (browser-based) competitor?

I've been impressed by what Figma can do in a browser, but I also agree that a native desktop app (not Electron) can be faster, more nimble, and more capable than browser-based apps.

No matter how ingeniously browser-based apps are coded, they'll eventually hit limitations that native desktop apps won't have to face. Of course, none of this might matter if the browser-based app does everything a user wants.

That’s how I read it too.

I think the big question is going to be collaboration; as a web first tool Figma handles sharing much better than Sketch does. Sketch should buy or build something equivalent to Abstract or Invision in order to cover their flank.

Yes, that's true. I think they could also mentioned that you can at least use Sketch everywhere and anytime. Figma never seems to work, as it always wants you to login, and due to the internet being flaky at my part of London or on trains that can become problematic.

Before you know it you aren't able to login and unable to use Figma. That's my main pain point. I hoped the downloaded version of the app would solve this but no dice. Really looks promising but this is a bit of a no go for me to switch t Figma.

I think the one caveat is whether a tool works for 'everyone' as well. I love Sketch for where it works, though also respect how electron apps Figma/Miro have a place for designing together especially in educational environments where people may not all be on macs.

Posted this in the other thread about this same article, figured I’d share it here too:

It makes me sad to see native apps fade out in many cases. Maybe it’s just nostalgia - I spent many summers making little native applications with Delphi or Xcode, and had plenty of fun. There’s still something beautiful - and irreplaceable - in my opinion, about a well-designed native app.

Sure, some Electron apps are pretty, but I’d prefer to have my minimally-styled, “boring-looking”, native macOS and Windows software back.

It’s funny they mention Panic/Nova... that’s another application that is sliding right into the dustbin of irrelevance. The world is passing both of these by, because Apple messed up their developer relations and creative pro relations for years, all to try and push the iPad as a viable alternative to desktop computing.

Sketch and Nova only exist because there is the Mac user base who wants to use them.

At this point it doesn’t matter how pure Sketch or Nova is, the party is already over. People started leaving years ago, and there is now this operating system diversity among dev and creatives that wasn’t so brazenly there ten years ago. Not having a Windows client, and doubling down on it, seems like a really really bad idea.

That blog design is sure a lot of fun. Reminds me of the old blog "As the Apple Turns".

While I'm generally in favor of native apps, this article reads like a puff piece from Apple trying to show off how much they value developers, particularly in light of the ongoing skirmishes with Epic, Spotify and the Coalition for App Fairness.

I'll be honest here: My #1 reason for avoiding Sketch like the plague is because it is Mac-only.

It may be the best software in its category, but I'll stick with a competitor just because they support different platforms.

Yeah that coupled with the fact that I have a MacBook but a PC desktop, drawings things in sketch on my MacBook is just not as fast and easy as on my desktop using figma.

Just found out about Akira the other day for us Linux users who liked Sketch.

Looks like there hasn’t been a lot of activity on Akita since the Kickstarter failed.

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