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Surprisingly not mentioned until the bottom of the page is that this is by an established boutique Mac software company, PixelCut (makers of PaintCode). This is

Surprisingly not mentioned until the bottom of the page is that this is by an established boutique Mac software company, PixelCut (makers of PaintCode). This is not an overburdened Electron app dependent on a SaaS subscription, but an actual, honest-to-goodness Mac application for prototyping interactions.

saagarjha 7y ago
I think it's somewhat obvious that this is a native application from the screenshots, but that might just be me…
bogwog 7y ago
> This is not an overburdened Electron app dependent on a SaaS subscription, but an actual, honest-to-goodness Mac application for prototyping interactions. Well I'm sold
GordonS 7y ago
> This is not an overburdened Electron app I was kind of hoping it was a (carefully made) Electron app, so I could use it on Windows.
- flixic 7y ago
  It is amazing how vibrant the macOS-exclusive UI design ecosystem is, with many high quality apps: Sketch, Flinto, Principle, IconJar, PaintCode and more. The second best ecosystem is web apps, spearheaded by Figma, and arguably Adobe's XD standing on its own. There are almost no Windows- or Linux-exclusive tools.
  - aloer 7y ago
    I read somewhere that Sketch was only possible because of the high quality of osx/quartz at the time. Lots of low level work already done by Apple. But now that has become the reason they can’t compete with web based tools like Figma
    - jdhn 7y ago
      I believe Sketch is coming out with an online version later this year or early next year.
      - arvinsim 7y ago
        I just want them to remove their regressive 1 computer = 1 license policy. I have multiple Mac Computers and I can only use Sketch on one. I don't think it is a stretch to think that most designers might have multiple computers. If they are worried about people using multiple instances of 1 license, why don't they do it like Jetbrains does for its IDEs?
littlestymaar 7y ago
> This is not an overburdened Electron app And instead this is a Mac-only app. I'd take the “bloated”-but-portable version any day. Many people actually like electron because portability matters more to them than the purity of a “truly native” app.
- pier25 7y ago
  You can have portability without the bloat introduced by having Node and Chrome bundled in each app. We've gone from using Electron to using the web view provided by the platform (macOS/Windows) and we've reduced the app size by 90%. The macOS app consumes about 20MB of memory... We do have some native code in each platform which represents about 10-15% of the app but we could have reduced that a lot if we had used cross platform code (C++, Go, Nim, Rust, etc) compiled as libs for each platform.
  - thijsvandien 7y ago
    It’s times like these when I feel old, because I notice how we went full circle. At the beginning of the decade, there was a move towards web views in native applications. Installing an update for Internet Explorer would result in script errors or other breakage all over the interface of Norton Internet Security.
    - pier25 7y ago
      I started doing web dev in the late 90s... I remember those times. Thankfully we live in a better world now. :) The only problem we've found so far is Edge not doing CSS animations properly on SVG elements. Otherwise everything has been going smooth.
- rudi-c 7y ago
  I upvoted you because it's easy to forget that, outside the US and a few western countries, most people use Windows (even design professionals). In some of those countries, the price point of Macs make them a non-option. As a result, it's been harder for them to have access to design tools which have often been Mac-only. Furthermore, with modern Javascript JITs, performance issues are generally not easily summarized as "it's Electron". VSCode is the typical example of an Electron app with good performance. Performance issues often have to do with specific operations needing to be optimized rather than some general multiplier. At times, it's been faster than Sublime for me, because Sublime happened to do something inefficient (e.g. trying to syntax-highlight a very large log file, whereas VSCode preferred to bail). I'm sure with infinite resources, native apps can be faster than Electron ones, but almost never do application developers have the resources to invest to get that far. Disclaimer: I work on design tools

saagarjha 7y ago

I think it's somewhat obvious that this is a native application from the screenshots, but that might just be me…

bogwog 7y ago

> This is not an overburdened Electron app dependent on a SaaS subscription, but an actual, honest-to-goodness Mac application for prototyping interactions. Well I'm sold

GordonS 7y ago

> This is not an overburdened Electron app I was kind of hoping it was a (carefully made) Electron app, so I could use it on Windows.

flixic 7y ago
It is amazing how vibrant the macOS-exclusive UI design ecosystem is, with many high quality apps: Sketch, Flinto, Principle, IconJar, PaintCode and more. The second best ecosystem is web apps, spearheaded by Figma, and arguably Adobe's XD standing on its own. There are almost no Windows- or Linux-exclusive tools.
- aloer 7y ago
  I read somewhere that Sketch was only possible because of the high quality of osx/quartz at the time. Lots of low level work already done by Apple. But now that has become the reason they can’t compete with web based tools like Figma
  - jdhn 7y ago
    I believe Sketch is coming out with an online version later this year or early next year.
    - arvinsim 7y ago
      I just want them to remove their regressive 1 computer = 1 license policy. I have multiple Mac Computers and I can only use Sketch on one. I don't think it is a stretch to think that most designers might have multiple computers. If they are worried about people using multiple instances of 1 license, why don't they do it like Jetbrains does for its IDEs?

littlestymaar 7y ago

> This is not an overburdened Electron app And instead this is a Mac-only app. I'd take the “bloated”-but-portable version any day. Many people actually like electron because portability matters more to them than the purity of a “truly native” app.

pier25 7y ago
You can have portability without the bloat introduced by having Node and Chrome bundled in each app. We've gone from using Electron to using the web view provided by the platform (macOS/Windows) and we've reduced the app size by 90%. The macOS app consumes about 20MB of memory... We do have some native code in each platform which represents about 10-15% of the app but we could have reduced that a lot if we had used cross platform code (C++, Go, Nim, Rust, etc) compiled as libs for each platform.
- thijsvandien 7y ago
  It’s times like these when I feel old, because I notice how we went full circle. At the beginning of the decade, there was a move towards web views in native applications. Installing an update for Internet Explorer would result in script errors or other breakage all over the interface of Norton Internet Security.
  - pier25 7y ago
    I started doing web dev in the late 90s... I remember those times. Thankfully we live in a better world now. :) The only problem we've found so far is Edge not doing CSS animations properly on SVG elements. Otherwise everything has been going smooth.
rudi-c 7y ago
I upvoted you because it's easy to forget that, outside the US and a few western countries, most people use Windows (even design professionals). In some of those countries, the price point of Macs make them a non-option. As a result, it's been harder for them to have access to design tools which have often been Mac-only. Furthermore, with modern Javascript JITs, performance issues are generally not easily summarized as "it's Electron". VSCode is the typical example of an Electron app with good performance. Performance issues often have to do with specific operations needing to be optimized rather than some general multiplier. At times, it's been faster than Sublime for me, because Sublime happened to do something inefficient (e.g. trying to syntax-highlight a very large log file, whereas VSCode preferred to bail). I'm sure with infinite resources, native apps can be faster than Electron ones, but almost never do application developers have the resources to invest to get that far. Disclaimer: I work on design tools