14 DAY TRIAL // Popular design app Sketch from Bohemian Coding was pulled yesterday from the Mac App Store after its developers had enough of Apple's slow review process.
Sketch, the app that has slowly but surely managed to replace Photoshop as the go-to tool for frontend, UI, and mobile interface design, will now be available for sale only via its official homepage.
Its developer explained the unexpected move in a lengthy blog post where all the blame, as in other cases where popular apps left the Mac App Store, was put on Apple's slow review process, which is at around one week for each update developers want to push to their apps.
The Adobe connection
With Adobe breathing down its neck after the announcement of Project Comet, a direct competitor to Sketch that also combines features from services like Principle and InVision, Bohemian Coding needs to step up its game to keep its users happy.
The first thing to keep users happy is to ensure all bugs are fixed and new features are added. While the dev team says it had fixed many performance problems with Sketch, apparently not all were approved by Apple's reviewers.
"App Review continues to take at least a week, there are technical limitations imposed by the Mac App Store guidelines (sandboxing and so on) that limit some of the features we want to bring to Sketch," noted the Sketch team.
Bohemian Coding is looking for new revenue streams
But this is not all. Sketch's creators are also griping about the lack of a paid upgrade feature on the Mac App Store, which would allow them to ask existing customers to pay whenever upgrading to new releases.
As said before, Adobe's breathing down Bohemian Coding's neck. If the company wants to survive the comet that's about to hit, it will need to boost its financial resources to have a fighting chance. Talented developers aren't cheap, and while Sketch has been doing fine until now, the app was walking all alone in the park. With Adobe around the corner, this walk is about to turn into a jog, and later into a full-on race.
Many see this as a money-grab move from Bohemian Coding, but when there are hundreds of paid or open source plugins developed for your app, maybe it's time to set up your own App Store instead, and stop giving Apple 27% of your sales.
Existing Sketch customers are advised to download Sketch from Bohemian Coding's website, install it and enter the new license that the company will issue to them.
