Have you tried any of the apps they're claiming are superior? I would argue Sketch is compared to Inkscape, and Pixelmator is compared to Gimp. For someone who is mostly messing around casually and just for fun, Inkscape and Gimp are great. They give you most of the tools you need or want, but not always in a straightforward way, and their UIs are lacking compared to their commercial counterparts.
Sketch and Pixelmator, to me, operate in a significantly smoother way, and make doing basic tasks substantially easier. The biggest thing that comes to mind for Sketch/Inkscape is exporting sections of the larger project file into individual assets. It's a breeze in sketch. It's integrated in the main UI, it operates in a predictable way, and it just works. Inkscape pulls you through a series of menus, and doesn't have any way to remember how you've previously separated up your assets (unless there's some way to do that deeply hidden in the UI that I could never find).
So yes, Sketch and Pixelmator, and most well-known creative software (anything in the Adobe suite, the Affinity Suite, etc) is generally significantly ahead of the open source options. Would I prefer it otherwise, sure, but the open source options aren't used by that many professionals, and are generally swimming upstream to implement features the commercial ones already have, instead of creating the next great feature (whatever that is) or streamlining their UI to make easier to use.
Sketch and Pixelmator, to me, operate in a significantly smoother way, and make doing basic tasks substantially easier. The biggest thing that comes to mind for Sketch/Inkscape is exporting sections of the larger project file into individual assets. It's a breeze in sketch. It's integrated in the main UI, it operates in a predictable way, and it just works. Inkscape pulls you through a series of menus, and doesn't have any way to remember how you've previously separated up your assets (unless there's some way to do that deeply hidden in the UI that I could never find).
So yes, Sketch and Pixelmator, and most well-known creative software (anything in the Adobe suite, the Affinity Suite, etc) is generally significantly ahead of the open source options. Would I prefer it otherwise, sure, but the open source options aren't used by that many professionals, and are generally swimming upstream to implement features the commercial ones already have, instead of creating the next great feature (whatever that is) or streamlining their UI to make easier to use.