The thing IMO that really killed Sketch was not being able to share Sketch files with non-Mac users and let them open them up. They should have at least created a Windows/Linux (or web) viewer. They don't need edit functionality but nearly always someone in the approval/feedback process of a mockup will not be on Mac.

It's just not realistic at larger orgs (or IMO smaller ones too) to expect everyone to be on a Mac.

Then came Figma which solved this problem completely.

> The thing IMO that really killed Sketch

Are we just accepting that Sketch is “dead” now? Genuinely curious. I realize Figma has been doing great things, but wasn’t under the impression that Sketch is over.

I don't know if it's "dead" but I have known a bunch of teams that, within the past 18 months, all switched from Sketch to Figma, and I certainly don't know anyone that's switched the other direction, soooo...

That said, these were all website and mobile app design teams, and another commenter mentioned that Sketch is better for print design. Still, have to imagine that print is a shrinking part of the overall marketplace.

All I know is a few (2 or 3) years ago I constantly got expense requests to cover sketch license renewals. It suddenly... stopped. We cover a Figma license but it never seems much.

We had at least 4 people in the team that ran a (poorly performing, annoying) VM with OSX just for sketch.

Sketch has had an integrated cloud sharing feature for awhile. You click two buttons in the app, and you have a shareable, comment-able page or prototype.

Figma’s first-mover advantage is significant, though.

Ridiculous statement. Sketch is very much alive and it can survive on Mac-only users for a long time going forward as well, if they decide to.

Am I the only one who doesn't think Apple have much interest in supporting classic MacOS apps in the future?

Back in the day we used to judge the viability of Apples new techon if the Adobe suite was using them. This was a big deal during the Classic to OS X switch and the PPC to Intel switch.

I'm convinced Apple sees the future of Macs as running iPad apps, Photoshop and Illustrator are already there. Just how many other classic Mac apps do you think Apple consider critical? I think I can name 8.

I haven't really been too worried about that. They're free to build apps that are simpler to use, but the technology and frameworks behind it still need to be in place. As long as Apple themselves need to build e.g. Xcode, they need to be focusing on allowing developers to build macOS apps.

Yeah this. I love Macs but I mostly develop on my Linux Workstation so my company’s been using Figma since March and I’d honestly forgotten about sketch

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.

This isn't a property of native apps or web apps.

As someone who's worked on a lot of collaborative technology, I find it weird how most of the interest in collaborative editing is confined to the web. As I understand it, Figma's internal collaborative engine is written in C++ anyway.

Collaboration all but requires being online (good offline collab is much harder to implement as you surely know), so that eliminates one of the main advantages of native apps.

Collaboration is also much more useful when you're not limited to only working with people using the same OS. Multi-platform distribution is built into web apps, but it takes a lot more effort to create good native apps on several platforms.

Also, of course, no need to install anything on the web, which is important for frictionless collaboration.

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It's no surprise that both desktop and mobile OS-s are very much not optimized for cross platform development. It's a feature (for owners of those OS-s), not a bug.

If I recall correctly, Figma's entire UI is C++ compiled down to webassembly.

If they went to the trouble to write it in C++ why use the browser instead of QT?

Exactly for the sharing features people have been discussing. It may be OK for the design team to download the app, but product managers, devs, marketers and other stakeholders don't want to also have to go through the trouble of downloading the app.

A primary thing Figma understood better than pretty much anyone else is how collaboration among different teams (not just design) works in product development.

I’d imagine zero-install was a big thing

And Rust

Yes they run it in web assembly

This sounds like hell to me as a designer.

It’s really not because multiplayer is there for walking through designs, leaving comments, or working with another designer. I work on a team of 10 and I don’t see anyone else in my designs unless I’m handing off to a dev or doing a review. At that point it’s amazing, as I can link anyone in our org a design and they can open it.

Check out Adobe XD, it supports simultaneously editing by a team right out of the box.

But it’s been a worse experience for your mobile developers.

Why?

Figma is not a viable alternative if you're anything but a digital designer.

There are still print designers, packaging designers, exhibit designers, illustrators, the list goes on. I don’t see Sketch as dead, if anything it’s been getting a lot of cool new features over the past months.

Is Sketch doing anything for print? I haven't used it for a few years now and back then it was digital only.

Sketch isn't a print design tool, that is all still very locked up in Adobe with Affinity being the only real competitor. Not sure why it's being brought up in this context.

I thought that Adobe and Affinity are the only ones fighting in that front.

This is just one single-topic blog post on the Sketch blog. It is not a complete argument for using Sketch. It does present a complete overview of why someone would benefit from a native Mac app.

I don’t know what the bandwagon is doing, other than that I’m aware that Figma is also popular, but clearly cloud software has been contending with native for some time, each with their own advantages, and so it’s not surprising or concerning that software vendors of both software platform types would market the advantages of their chosen platform.

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.

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.