How can we develop transformative tools for thought?
As a former UI designer, this is a gross misrepresentation of what happened with Sketch (and to a lesser extent, Figma):<p>&gt; Consider, for example, the way the program Sketch has eaten into Adobe’s market share, after duplicating many of the best features from several of Adobe’s products, perhaps most notably Illustrator. And consider the way Figma is now eating into both Sketch and Illustrator’s market share. Both Sketch and Figma have done this without needing to make an enormous investment in research. That’s a big advantage they have over Adobe.<p>Leading up to the time that Sketch emerged, UI designers were complaining constantly to Adobe to provide features to support their work. All of us were using a tiny subset of Photoshop&#x27;s features crammed into the corner (the vector editing features). Remember Adobe <i>actively killed</i> Fireworks[0] the exact product specialized for UI designers that should have prevented Sketch from emerging. I consider Adobe leaving an opening big enough for Sketch to emerge one of the biggest mistakes I&#x27;ve ever seen a tech company make. It was plainly obvious that there was product category there, so many people were talking about it that to me as a designer it was deafening.<p>Not to mention, if you were paying the slightest bit of attention to graphical apps for artists, you would have noticed Acorn[1], a Photoshop competitor released in 2007, three years before Sketch, <i>maintained by one person</i>, based on the support Apple was aggressively adding to AppKit for this type of application. If you were an expert in this market and you didn&#x27;t realize that someone was going to use that same toolkit to make a UI tool, which so many people were asking for, I don&#x27;t know what to tell you. And of course that&#x27;s exactly what happened with Sketch.<p>This isn&#x27;t a story about Sketch copying Adobe products, it&#x27;s a story about Adobe&#x27;s product leadership making a series of mistakes that left a gap in the market.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Adobe_Fireworks" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Adobe_Fireworks</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flyingmeat.com&#x2F;acorn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flyingmeat.com&#x2F;acorn&#x2F;</a>