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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 th

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.

outworlder 6y ago
> It's clear users in general don't care about an app being pure Mac OS controls/SDKs/etc. They may not put it in those terms, but they do. They can tell when an app feels 'weird' or slow (be it actually slow or just higher latency). That depends a lot on the user base for the specific app in question. The more 'casual' the user base, the less it matters. Being native also allows you to get functionality for free that other users may depend on. In OSX it translates to things like scripts, or more often, assistive devices, like screen readers.
- francisl 6y ago
  I'm not involved with figma in any way, just a user. But from what I understand, it is written in c++ and uses webassembly. Some ui parts are in standard TS+css. [1] There is absolutely no reason not to be responsive, low on memory and as powerful as a native app. [1] https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/ https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...
  - alfalfasprout 6y ago
    The backend is rust I believe. But at the end of the day I've used figma and the UI isn't anywhere near as responsive as a native app. You might not care about this but some people do.
- untog 6y ago
  I still don’t think the vast majority of users care. Slowness is something separate and I’d agree that a laggy interface is an awful one, especially with a visual tool like Sketch. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make that complaint about Figma.
  - bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
    It’s true, the vast majority of users don’t need accessibility features, but those who do absolutely cannot compromise on them.
- nl 6y ago
  VS.Code users aren't exactly casual users and in the main are happy enough to use it as their main coding interface many hours per day (and yes I understand that this is HN so now there will be a bunch of people saying "I'm not happy).
  - andoriyu 6y ago
    VSCode users never seen snappy and well-made IDE. Most probably think "source code highlighting" + "project drawer" = IDE. Just going to leave this here https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    I love the things VSCode offers that its competition doesn’t. I can’t imagine working with any of the other available editors for the Mac. I hate how I feel like I’m working in a weird web app all day every day. I feel both simultaneously.
    - Razengan 6y ago
      Give Panic's Nova a try: https://nova.app https://nova.app
      - bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
        No vim plugin makes it DOA as far as I'm concerned
      - eyelidlessness 6y ago
        Wanted to say I started taking a look yesterday and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. But I don’t have my whole workflow set up yet. Thanks for the nudge, I’d been meaning to give it a look!
  - alfalfasprout 6y ago
    Compare it to plain vim and you'll be shocked at the responsiveness difference. I even find the jetbrains IDEs kinda laggy.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I like to write native apps (Swift). I won’t go into why (as everyone here seems to be trying to convince everyone else, who aren’t really listening, anyway. I’m not really looking to change my viewpoint). Figma is cool. I’m working with a designer, now, and we’ll see how it goes. Not sure I’d really say it was a direct Sketch competitor, though. I think Adobe Illustrator is Sketch’s biggest competitor, and that says a lot about Sketch.
  - Scarbutt 6y ago
    What can Sketch do that Figma can't?
    - geerlingguy 6y ago
      Run natively on the Mac /s
      - EvilEy3 6y ago
        Why /s though? It is a huge pro for some people.
        geerlingguy 6y ago
        Because it's already been mentioned a number of times in the thread and is a very major selling point (IMO).
    - usaphp 6y ago
      Work offline, Better font rendering
    - jnymck 6y ago
      Custom keyboard shortcuts
    - Razengan 6y ago
      Better support for the built-in accessibility features of macOS.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I agree with you, and I think this is a pretty good signal that Sketch is REALLY feeling the heat from Figma, because they aren't offering a better argument besides "we're native". The bandwagon has clearly jumped off Sketch and onto Figma, and not because it's "fashionable", but because Figma is plain awesome.
- qppo 6y ago
  I don't know if they're feeling the heat since they seem like two different verticals. Sketch is a drawing app with support for some UI development workflows. Figma is workplace productivity software with support for some UI development workflows and drawing. I love Sketch but it's closer to Illustrator or XD (at least, that's how I use it) than Figma. If they want to throw shade it should be at Adobe, since their interface is just better and app is faster/smaller/doesn't run six background daemons. On a different note, I've heard multiple pitches where startups position themselves as "Figma for X" but never "Sketch for X." Figma is a platform that is building out into different markets, Sketch has much smaller applicability.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    All I can say is I know of at least a couple of design teams that switched all of their workflows off Sketch and onto Figma, so seems like a direct competitor to me.
- marrone12 6y ago
  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.
  - chrstphrknwtn 6y ago
    This sounds like hell to me as a designer.
    - 6y ago
eyelidlessness 6y ago
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.
- snarkypixel 6y ago
  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
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonmy 6y ago
    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.
    - danielrd 6y ago
      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.
      - sizzle 6y ago
        Adobe XD does all these things and has Miro integration for seamless collaboration and works in windows and Mac. Any reason why I would use Figma instead?
PrinceKropotkin 6y ago
Fwiw people use sketch for reasons other than designing interfaces. I'd think illustrator would demonstrate your point better.
tambourine_man 6y ago
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.
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  I think the killer feature of macs with Apple Silicon is that the iPad versions of Slack and Discord would "just work" and people wouldn't have to deal with Electron crap anymore.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Until the companies running them disable the ability to run those…
  - vijaybritto 6y ago
    Discord is made out of React native I think. The performance is incredible most of the times. Sometimes it goes crazy and uses 100% CPU for a long time as if there's a while loop somewhere. And with Apple Silicon, Im not sure that the restriction right now is architecture. Swift supports both x86 and ARM right? The problem is that the interactions are different in the desktop OS and simply recompiling or running it on desktop would not be a great experience.
    - diebeforei485 6y ago
      Apple Silicon macs can run iOS/iPadOS binaries natively, no recompilation and no Catalyst needed. I think the experience of iPad apps will be just fine.
  - yoz-y 6y ago
    I’ll believe the story that these will be any good when Catalyst apps will start behaving like native apps. If developers can’t bother making a native experience with frameworks that are meant to do this, I don’t think they will with an even simpler paradigm. My canary in the coal mine: Apple’s own SF Symbols.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
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 earlier this year and tried to pawn it off on her, but she didn't even want it because it doesn't run Sketch. She's stuck on a Macbook. Some people are replying to you saying there are these great benefits to being macOS native, but they really pale in comparison to having to learn something as complex as Sketch. A few familiar component paradigms don't really put a dent in the learning curve, or it's at least vastly overstated. I'd liken Sketch more to Photoshop in the sense that some native components aren't going to make the hard stuff easier. One practical downside of being macOS-only is that it makes those hard fought Sketch skills less portable and any business that uses Sketch in their pipeline now has a hard platform requirement. Maybe they'll choose something else like Figma. That's something much more tangible to a Sketch professional. Even VS Code's popularity among developers (the one group presumably sensitive to "native" vs not) suggests how little weight "native" carries with most people. When it's time to get work done, turns out there are more important considerations. I think you're right, hard to imagine it's a hill worth dying on.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  Sounds like she came up with a good reason to decline the offer under the duress of someone comparing specs as a selling point. If I did the same with my GF who just uses the web and some standard apps, she'd be like "no, why would I want that giant monolithic rgb heat generator that I can't take anywhere?". Some people buy nacs because that's what the applications run on, or it's required for school, but a hell of a lot of people just like macs.
- rado 6y ago
  Windows is broken spyware.
  - sdoering 6y ago
    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 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.
talentedcoin 6y ago
Totally agreed. And, although the site is definitely cool, isn't it kind of ironic? It's a paen to native-only Mac apps back in the System 9 days, when the developer experience and design language was totally different. Macs don't even look, or work, like this anymore. I think it's great that this is what they want to focus on, but it's not very convincing as a business decision in general -- it feels like doubling down on the past.
throwaway743 6y ago
As someone fortunate enough to wfh, works in both dev and ux, and uses Windows and Ubuntu, I couldn't agree more. Nearly want to shoot myself every time I'm told, "Hey, I'm sending over the Sketch file" or "sigh An Illustrator again? I wish you had a mac w/ Sketch when you made these wires". I can't blame the people who say that, but god damn just release a windows version. There's Lunacy for windows, but it's buggy as hell. Call me old fashion, but I'm sticking to Illustrator for the time being

outworlder 6y ago

> It's clear users in general don't care about an app being pure Mac OS controls/SDKs/etc. They may not put it in those terms, but they do. They can tell when an app feels 'weird' or slow (be it actually slow or just higher latency). That depends a lot on the user base for the specific app in question. The more 'casual' the user base, the less it matters. Being native also allows you to get functionality for free that other users may depend on. In OSX it translates to things like scripts, or more often, assistive devices, like screen readers.

francisl 6y ago
I'm not involved with figma in any way, just a user. But from what I understand, it is written in c++ and uses webassembly. Some ui parts are in standard TS+css. [1] There is absolutely no reason not to be responsive, low on memory and as powerful as a native app. [1] https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/ https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...
- alfalfasprout 6y ago
  The backend is rust I believe. But at the end of the day I've used figma and the UI isn't anywhere near as responsive as a native app. You might not care about this but some people do.
untog 6y ago
I still don’t think the vast majority of users care. Slowness is something separate and I’d agree that a laggy interface is an awful one, especially with a visual tool like Sketch. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make that complaint about Figma.
- bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
  It’s true, the vast majority of users don’t need accessibility features, but those who do absolutely cannot compromise on them.
nl 6y ago
VS.Code users aren't exactly casual users and in the main are happy enough to use it as their main coding interface many hours per day (and yes I understand that this is HN so now there will be a bunch of people saying "I'm not happy).
- andoriyu 6y ago
  VSCode users never seen snappy and well-made IDE. Most probably think "source code highlighting" + "project drawer" = IDE. Just going to leave this here https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  I love the things VSCode offers that its competition doesn’t. I can’t imagine working with any of the other available editors for the Mac. I hate how I feel like I’m working in a weird web app all day every day. I feel both simultaneously.
  - Razengan 6y ago
    Give Panic's Nova a try: https://nova.app https://nova.app
    - bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
      No vim plugin makes it DOA as far as I'm concerned
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      Wanted to say I started taking a look yesterday and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. But I don’t have my whole workflow set up yet. Thanks for the nudge, I’d been meaning to give it a look!
- alfalfasprout 6y ago
  Compare it to plain vim and you'll be shocked at the responsiveness difference. I even find the jetbrains IDEs kinda laggy.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I like to write native apps (Swift). I won’t go into why (as everyone here seems to be trying to convince everyone else, who aren’t really listening, anyway. I’m not really looking to change my viewpoint). Figma is cool. I’m working with a designer, now, and we’ll see how it goes. Not sure I’d really say it was a direct Sketch competitor, though. I think Adobe Illustrator is Sketch’s biggest competitor, and that says a lot about Sketch.
- Scarbutt 6y ago
  What can Sketch do that Figma can't?
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    Run natively on the Mac /s
    - EvilEy3 6y ago
      Why /s though? It is a huge pro for some people.
      - geerlingguy 6y ago
        Because it's already been mentioned a number of times in the thread and is a very major selling point (IMO).
  - usaphp 6y ago
    Work offline, Better font rendering
  - jnymck 6y ago
    Custom keyboard shortcuts
  - Razengan 6y ago
    Better support for the built-in accessibility features of macOS.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

I agree with you, and I think this is a pretty good signal that Sketch is REALLY feeling the heat from Figma, because they aren't offering a better argument besides "we're native". The bandwagon has clearly jumped off Sketch and onto Figma, and not because it's "fashionable", but because Figma is plain awesome.

qppo 6y ago
I don't know if they're feeling the heat since they seem like two different verticals. Sketch is a drawing app with support for some UI development workflows. Figma is workplace productivity software with support for some UI development workflows and drawing. I love Sketch but it's closer to Illustrator or XD (at least, that's how I use it) than Figma. If they want to throw shade it should be at Adobe, since their interface is just better and app is faster/smaller/doesn't run six background daemons. On a different note, I've heard multiple pitches where startups position themselves as "Figma for X" but never "Sketch for X." Figma is a platform that is building out into different markets, Sketch has much smaller applicability.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  All I can say is I know of at least a couple of design teams that switched all of their workflows off Sketch and onto Figma, so seems like a direct competitor to me.
marrone12 6y ago
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.
- chrstphrknwtn 6y ago
  This sounds like hell to me as a designer.
  - 6y ago

eyelidlessness 6y ago

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.

snarkypixel 6y ago
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
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jonmy 6y ago
  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.
  - danielrd 6y ago
    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.
    - sizzle 6y ago
      Adobe XD does all these things and has Miro integration for seamless collaboration and works in windows and Mac. Any reason why I would use Figma instead?

PrinceKropotkin 6y ago

Fwiw people use sketch for reasons other than designing interfaces. I'd think illustrator would demonstrate your point better.

tambourine_man 6y ago

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.

diebeforei485 6y ago
I think the killer feature of macs with Apple Silicon is that the iPad versions of Slack and Discord would "just work" and people wouldn't have to deal with Electron crap anymore.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Until the companies running them disable the ability to run those…
- vijaybritto 6y ago
  Discord is made out of React native I think. The performance is incredible most of the times. Sometimes it goes crazy and uses 100% CPU for a long time as if there's a while loop somewhere. And with Apple Silicon, Im not sure that the restriction right now is architecture. Swift supports both x86 and ARM right? The problem is that the interactions are different in the desktop OS and simply recompiling or running it on desktop would not be a great experience.
  - diebeforei485 6y ago
    Apple Silicon macs can run iOS/iPadOS binaries natively, no recompilation and no Catalyst needed. I think the experience of iPad apps will be just fine.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  I’ll believe the story that these will be any good when Catalyst apps will start behaving like native apps. If developers can’t bother making a native experience with frameworks that are meant to do this, I don’t think they will with an even simpler paradigm. My canary in the coal mine: Apple’s own SF Symbols.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

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 earlier this year and tried to pawn it off on her, but she didn't even want it because it doesn't run Sketch. She's stuck on a Macbook. Some people are replying to you saying there are these great benefits to being macOS native, but they really pale in comparison to having to learn something as complex as Sketch. A few familiar component paradigms don't really put a dent in the learning curve, or it's at least vastly overstated. I'd liken Sketch more to Photoshop in the sense that some native components aren't going to make the hard stuff easier. One practical downside of being macOS-only is that it makes those hard fought Sketch skills less portable and any business that uses Sketch in their pipeline now has a hard platform requirement. Maybe they'll choose something else like Figma. That's something much more tangible to a Sketch professional. Even VS Code's popularity among developers (the one group presumably sensitive to "native" vs not) suggests how little weight "native" carries with most people. When it's time to get work done, turns out there are more important considerations. I think you're right, hard to imagine it's a hill worth dying on.

brailsafe 6y ago
Sounds like she came up with a good reason to decline the offer under the duress of someone comparing specs as a selling point. If I did the same with my GF who just uses the web and some standard apps, she'd be like "no, why would I want that giant monolithic rgb heat generator that I can't take anywhere?". Some people buy nacs because that's what the applications run on, or it's required for school, but a hell of a lot of people just like macs.
rado 6y ago
Windows is broken spyware.
- sdoering 6y ago
  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 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.

talentedcoin 6y ago

Totally agreed. And, although the site is definitely cool, isn't it kind of ironic? It's a paen to native-only Mac apps back in the System 9 days, when the developer experience and design language was totally different. Macs don't even look, or work, like this anymore. I think it's great that this is what they want to focus on, but it's not very convincing as a business decision in general -- it feels like doubling down on the past.

throwaway743 6y ago

As someone fortunate enough to wfh, works in both dev and ux, and uses Windows and Ubuntu, I couldn't agree more. Nearly want to shoot myself every time I'm told, "Hey, I'm sending over the Sketch file" or "sigh An Illustrator again? I wish you had a mac w/ Sketch when you made these wires". I can't blame the people who say that, but god damn just release a windows version. There's Lunacy for windows, but it's buggy as hell. Call me old fashion, but I'm sticking to Illustrator for the time being