{"id":30543,"date":"2020-10-27T17:01:41","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T21:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=30543"},"modified":"2021-01-21T16:11:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T21:11:05","slug":"sketch-on-native-mac-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/27\/sketch-on-native-mac-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"Sketch on Native Mac Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sketch<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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Native apps bring so many benefits — from personalization and performance to familiarity and flexibility. And while we’re always working hard to make Cloud an amazing space to collaborate, we still believe the Mac is the perfect place to let your ideas and imagination flourish.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

This is something we pride ourselves on — over the years we’ve taken design cues from Apple, working hard to make your experience feel consistent and natural whenever you switch from our Mac app to apps like Pages or Keynote. We support UI changes, such as Dark Mode, as they launch. And right now we’re putting the finishing touches to a major UI update so that our Mac app will still look perfectly at home when macOS Big Sur releases later this Fall.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I love native apps, Sketch is my design app of choice, and the retro design of the blog post makes feel warm and fuzzy. But something about this worries me<\/a>. Is it convincing for someone who isn’t already sold on native apps? Or who is choosing based on other criteria?<\/p>\n\n

Kevin Kwok<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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The core insight of Figma is that design is larger than just designers. Design is all of the conversations between designers and PMs about what to build. It is the mocks and prototypes and the feedback on them. It is the handoff of specs and assets to engineers and how easy it is for them to implement them. Building for this entire process doesn’t take away the importance of designers—it gives them a seat at the table for the core decisions a company makes.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Designs in Figma are not just stored in the cloud; they are edited in the cloud, too. This means that Figma users are always working on the same design. With Dropbox, this isn’t true. The files may be stored in the cloud, but the editing happens locally—imagine the difference between sharing Word files in Dropbox vs. editing in Google Docs.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

When many creative tools companies talk about the cloud, they seem to view it as an amorphous place that they store files. But the fundamental user experience of creating in their products is done via a standalone app on the desktop. Figma is browser-first, which was made possible (and more importantly performant) by their understanding and usage of new technologies like WebGL, Operational Transforms, and CRDTs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n