Quark and the Mac

[MacRumors]

This Microsoft-watch.com article (http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,0,1199020,00.asp) recaps a Macworld Creative Pro presenatation given by Jürgen Kurz, Quark's vice-president of product management. In it, he addresses some concerns regarding Mac development:

During his presentation, Kurz sought to reassure professional content creators that Denver-based Quark still sees its traditional Mac market as core to its business, despite its increasing efforts to push its software for Windows. He also pledged to speed up development of future developments of the page-layout program.

Kurz goes on to promise major upgrades will be coming every "14 to 18 months". The article also covers other aspects of the presentation, including QuarkXPress 6 features, demos, and the porting of XTensions.

[Mudbug]

I like quark probably as much if not better than the next guy, but them saying they'll have updates every 14 - 18 months means it will be approx 4 years between updates in reality. Unless a miracle occurs.

[SiliconAddict]

Yah and we all know that people from large companies never lie. :rolleyes:
The fact alone that he has to tell the masses that they aren't going anywhere should be worrisome enough.

[Kid Red]

Sounds like Quark is trying to move to all windows but realizes that the Mac is still their bread and butter. Screw them, I hope everyone seriously considers inDesign.

[mrsebastian]

quark who?! sure i still have my quark 4.1 in case a customer sends a file in quark, but all i use it for is to print out the file for matching, when i convert it to indesign. so long quark, feel free to upgrade in 18 months, 2 years, or never it won't make a bit of difference to me.

[lilpig8]

You guys are all synical. Quit bashing someone for something they didn't say. Because you don't know you are talking about.
it is good that Quark is STAYING on for the mac. I did not read it wrong it is NOT going only windows!

[jayscheuerle]

Does no one notice that Quark changed less from versions 3 to 6 than any other graphics/publishing app ever did in a single version change?

Quark is not interested in expanding the boundaries of graphic design. They're so settled in their ways that imagination and creativity hold no sway in their product development. They'd rather be stable and stagnant and not rock the boat than be innovative. They are counterintuitive to the creative field.

Looking forward to ID3. - j

[cthorp]

I paid for the upgrade to 6 by buying Quark 5 upgrade (a while ago). I am still waiting for notification that my copy is shipping. Of course it has been available how may weeks? So maybe they will update it every 14-18 months. They just won't ship it. But hey it's done. That's like telling your client the job is done we'll call you when we feel like delivering it.

I am already transitioning to In Design. BTW I've been making a "good" living and supporting my family for over 13 years in the design field so I am not just some opinionated DTP wannabe geek.

theispot.com/artist/cthorp

[toddofthenorth]

Quark is going to shoot themselves by implementing their new licensing scheme. One computer per copy of quark.

[atomwork]

be seriouse. if quark would develop at least a program what can compete with indesign and its tons of features then i may be look at it again...my workflow just increased so much more after using InDesign. It rocks.

[the future]

Yeah, screw Quark. Monopolys are great. Just look at Microsoft.

[BillGates]

We really wanted to upgrade to Quark 6 but it cannot save back to 4.11 format. This makes it nearly impossible for us to use it since most of our clients want the files in 4.11 format.

[Belly-laughs]

Quark will suffer a slow painful death. And I sure hope they do! They´ve made me suffer for too long.

When I first started using Xpress six years ago I found it to be very akward and PC-like, it didn´t offer the intuitive way of working like most apps on the mac. In fact after all these years I still haven´t come to like it, and after moving to InDesign I don´t ever want to click on that Xpress application icon again.

Speaking of which; look at the icon. It´s as crap as the app itself!

[macguys]

Bzzzzzt....too late Quark. I've been steadly moving my clients to inDesign for months now. It's got its own foibles, but in general, it is compliant with the OS X specs and well integrated with the rest of the Adobe family.

If Quark is going to win the faithful back, they are going to have to push the envelope in a big way and roll out a release that has major productivity enhancements.

[jayscheuerle]

I just finished a brochure with InDesign which had an Illustrator texture in the background, with several "Multiply" layers in InDesign laying over the top coloring them, typography layers and Photoshop images with anti-aliased edges and soft drop shadows over the top of that. I couldn't have done the piece in Quark and the layer implementation in ID2 made client revisions easy.

ID2 is such a better program, though it's not without flaws and it's pokey on lesser systems.

Incidentally, my printer handled it without problem and it looked even better than I imagined. - j

[Fredo Viola]

The whole thing bums me out. Okay, so we are being forced to support Adobe, Apple's second largest, and perhaps most important, competitor. Adobe put me through HEEELLLLLLL with that "PC Preffered" non-sense. Now we're seeing them pull Premiere away from Mac-users and you know it ain't stoppin there! I am just so totally sick of having to deal with these big brutes competing with each other and tossing the users around without a thought. And Apple ain't no saint! Think of all the Logic users who now have to either buy a Mac and get used to osx, or learn a new sequencing program. It's foul. What ever happened to Apple being open and "democratic"?

[mistersquid]

Originally posted by mrsebastian

mrsebastian's sig:

Please visit my websites:
htttp://www.tibag.com
htttp://www.flushvintage.com
htttp://www.my2cents.biz

I know we all love the web, but there's no use putting THREE T's in "http". You might get more visitors if you linked your URLs with the vb code. Nice logos on the shirts at Flush Vintage, btw. Do you do licensing deals? ;)

[mrsebastian]

thanks mistersquid, that was a few too many "t"s in there :) actually working on updating the line with a new name, pricing, and site.

[solvs]

There are some people who still need to use Quark, and ID is not a viable option.

I am not one of those people. I feel very bad for those who are. Adobe isn't the greatest, but I've always hated Quark. I'd rather use Pagemaker. :rolleyes:

[addsapple]

Oh!
Cough...

I want Quark!

[j33pd0g]

Originally posted by solvs
There are some people who still need to use Quark, and ID is not a viable option.

I am not one of those people. I feel very bad for those who are. Adobe isn't the greatest, but I've always hated Quark. I'd rather use Pagemaker. :rolleyes:

It doesn't matter anymore to me... the company I work for will never go OS X. :mad:
...It is all quarks fault for not racing to the game quicker. You see, we were just bought out... and these guys are peecee fanatics. :( They are going to buy us quark 5 and from what I hear that just bites. Our 2 newest g4's have 400's in them... and 64 megs of ram. The rest of them are old beige g3's and even about 6 PowerMac 4400's.
I have this sad feeling my employers will buy us peecees and ditch the macs all together. That's why I feel if we had OS X ready macs prior to the buy out I wouldn't be in this boat.
I work at a newspaper. I'm a prepress technician, and I despise Quark.

[eoliver]

Just a little tidbit. I have been using InDesign to handle double-byte character files from my clients. I was looking into updating to Quark 6.0 until I found outthe US version doesn' t handle double-byte fonts and the version that does runs 1,999.00. Looks like I will be staying with InDesign.

Ex-Quark Fanatic
New InDesign Convert

[j33pd0g]

Originally posted by eoliver
Just a little tidbit. I have been using InDesign to handle double-byte character files from my clients. I was looking into updating to Quark 6.0 until I found outthe US version doesn' t handle double-byte fonts and the version that does runs 1,999.00. Looks like I will be staying with InDesign.

Ex-Quark Fanatic
New InDesign Convert

I also talked to a guy who has Quark 6 and he said you couldn't save documents as 4.0 and under. You can only save them as 5.0 and above. This sounds like a ploy to make people buy quark 5, or 6. And this is just crap. If we were to have quark 6, we couldn't send them to anyone around here... because they are all quark 4. The only reason why I want quark 6 is so I can use OS X at work. I am so sick of OS 8.1 - 8.6.

[mvc]

The sad truth of the situation is that prepress as an industry is at the boring end of a 20 year process of technological change, and has now settled into a rut of essentially innovationless tedium.

Where once graphic designers had to update the equipment and software every year just to try to execute basic work without the dreaded hourglass/wheel showing up, now the operator speed and skill is the main limiting factor on workflow. And thats the key reason why old macs still are used in this industry, and the uprgarde cycle has slowed, not the lamentable slowness of Motorolas processor developments.

Quarkxpress is like a giant leech tapped into the main vein, they know the game is over, and they just want to make sure they maximise their end run to oblivion.

They are metaphor for all that ails prepress.

And I have been in prepress for 14 years, so this doesn't make me feel happy or creatively fulfilled. :(

[scan300]

I'd wait to see how things pan out before putting the nails in Quark's coffin.

Quark seems to be battling high demand for their product:
We just got totally bombarded with orders," Kurz told attendees, and said that the company had a "huge backload."

IGM also note that PM G5 sales are strong and Quark sales are strong. (http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=2389)

While I would prefer our studio to embrace Indesign, it's important that Quark is successful and lifting their game – that publishing software on the Mac is not a one-horse race.

It's because Quark has been dominant in the press industry that the industry is slow to upgrade.

[drbyers]

quark is a piece of crap, as is pagemaker.

[macnews]

Originally posted by scan300
Quark seems to be battling high demand for their product:
IGM also note that PM G5 sales are strong and Quark

Duh their sales are good - how long have people been waiting for an OS X version? Plus, when you consider the $299 upgrade from 4 to 5 and get 6 free offers - who couldn't pass that up? the difference is most that I have spoke with bought ONE copy, not the whole license. That is what I did.

I have been testing ID2 for a year and after a month of hard testing with our printer, today we officially decided to go Indesign. I bought a copy of quark and we will keep informed but this year it is all Indesign.

Just FYI - the "open in publisher" button (I've been told by a friend on the net who got his copy) is gone, as well as the "get edition" button. This will kill many press operations, along with the back save issue, and may halt sales once the word gets out.

If Quark is more responsive then they might be able to pull their collective heads out. Since I haven't seen much change in their corp culture I doubt we will see the updates as promised.

Last thing, can any HONESTLY say they use the html function in Quark? I have found it so unreliable and could more easily copy/past/re-format in a true html editor. I think this direction, and Quark's apparent belief the net is the way to go, just shows their lack of inovation. So much is changing in the press world (printing to plate, advances in printing abilities, networking, workflow processes) you would think they could come up with a great idea. Personally, how about being able to work on a document at the same time? Don't tell me they have the "project" feature, it is not the same. I mean I am laying out a newspaper/magazine/brochure and I want to work on the front page while another person works on page 5. Why not create a check-in/check-out process for pages? This is what I mean by taking advantage of changes in networking and workflows. This would be a huge time saver. But not an option.

I'm just frustrated with Quark and happy to move to Indesign.

[bcharm]

I was actually there for this presentation and the app crashed in the middle of the presentation. :p

[scan300]

Originally posted by macnews
I mean I am laying out a newspaper/magazine/brochure and I want to work on the front page while another person works on page 5. Why not create a check-in/check-out process for pages? This is what I mean by taking advantage of changes in networking and workflows. This would be a huge time saver. But not an option.


That's Quark Publishing System. Expensive. Still won't be ready till 2004 for OSX.

[bkerr]

Does anybody have any experiebce designing or composing books in Indy vs Quark? Do you know if there will be a 3rd party extension to let people save Quark 6 to 4.11? Or is the code too different?

Thanks

http://www.planetbret.blogspot.com

[mrsebastian]

regardless of the q vs id battle, when you think about it from a business standpoint, quark the company is really missing the boat.

upgrades is where all the money is at! if i was quark, i'd make a decent upgrade every year and sell it for $100-200. according to quark's website, they say they have more than 4 million users of xpress! you do the math, that's quite a few clams... and of course it would be even more as some of those upgrades will be major releases for which you can charge more.

if anyone at quark is reading this, i'd be more than happy to join the team as a consultant for a nominal fee :D though i'd still have to use indesign, sorry.

[evoluzione]

Originally posted by bkerr
Does anybody have any experiebce designing or composing books in Indy vs Quark? Do you know if there will be a 3rd party extension to let people save Quark 6 to 4.11? Or is the code too different?

Thanks

http://www.planetbret.blogspot.com


i put a book together in Quark 4, and did an InDesign version too. it did not import into ID well at all, i had to rework the whole damn thing.

personally i have to say quark was the better tool for that job, but then i do have years of experience with quark....

oh, and drbyers...shut up. if you cant bring anything constructive to the forum, don't bother posting :rolleyes:

[Rustus Maximus]

Originally posted by the future
Yeah, screw Quark. Monopolys are great. Just look at Microsoft.

I suppose you are implying that an Adobe monopoly would be a bad thing? I agree but...first, Adobe has ALOT of ground to gain in order to completely drive Quark from the market. Second, if they DID manage to do that and were the only show in town, just as Quark once was, and they began to slip in innovation or keeping up with changes. Then someday some young startup will come along and bring an innovative product and attitude to market that will put them out of business.

There's a great segment in this article (http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/19876.html?cprose=daily) which talks about this very question...

quoting from the creativepro article...

The next era of page composition is coming, whether Quark and Adobe participate in it or not. History would indicate they won't, and they could go the way of Linotype, Monotype, Ludlow, Compugraphic, Scitex or any of the many long-departed composition systems manufacturers. I'd probably put Adobe more in the Kodak or Xerox category, however. The company will be fine and may even prosper, but we won't see revolutionary products from them in the future. Those typically come from outsiders who aren't restricted by so much knowledge of the past.

bold added for emphasis...end quote...

Competition is always there, no matter how hard they may be to find, and monopolies never last forever. They become too comfortable with themselves and the way they have always done things, and there is ALWAYS someone better, faster, smarter coming up behind you.

Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Does no one notice that Quark changed less from versions 3 to 6 than any other graphics/publishing app ever did in a single version change?

Quark is not interested in expanding the boundaries of graphic design. They're so settled in their ways that imagination and creativity hold no sway in their product development. They'd rather be stable and stagnant and not rock the boat than be innovative. They are counterintuitive to the creative field.

Looking forward to ID3. - j

How true, how true and how sad for Quark, but this is how the free market system works...if you don't innovate, you fade away. Reminds me of a great quote...

"If you always do what you've always done, you're gonna always get what you've always got."

Originally posted by BillGates
We really wanted to upgrade to Quark 6 but it cannot save back to 4.11 format. This makes it nearly impossible for us to use it since most of our clients want the files in 4.11 format.

Well, this is sort of like the chicken or the egg problem. Who upgrades first?...'Yoouuu do it!....Uh Uh, youuu...Ohhhh no, not us, you do it...No, No, we insist, you go ahead...

And what is Quark's brilliant solution to this self-made dilemna? Buy Quark 5 so you can then backsave to 5 from 6 then backsave to 4 from 5...

I...I think it finally happened...my eyes have rolled COMPLETELY back into my head!

Rustus

edited for stupid lack of sleep induced spelling mistakes :D

[jayscheuerle]

Originally posted by mrsebastian
upgrades is where all the money is at! if i was quark, i'd make a decent upgrade every year and sell it for $100-200. according to quark's website, they say they have more than 4 million users of xpress! you do the math, that's quite a few clams... and of course it would be even more as some of those upgrades will be major releases for which you can charge more.


The difference between Quark 3.3 and 6.0 is barely enough to justify a $100 upgrade fee.

The key phrase here is "decent upgrade". Quark isn't familiar with the concept. Their product evolution appears to be the product of a single programmer who works on improvements after his day job and a shift at Java World.

It wouldn't even take ten monkeys typing for 10 days to write a more compelling upgrade than Quarks programmers have come up with. This lack of saving from 6 down to 4 smacks of Apple's non OS9 booting Macs– a non-technical, business driven decision to cripple a product.

I have to use Quark every day. I get to use InDesign once in a while. I'm the only person in the Creative Department using OSX. People in Production have to be able to open the work I produce and they're running Quark 4. Hence, no ID2 for work that's going to end up in production and I'm stuck running Quark in Classic since it doesn't save down far enough from OSX.

Quark is a lame company that makes a reliable if not inspired product.

[Rustus Maximus]

Originally posted by jayscheuerle
This lack of saving from 6 down to 4 smacks of Apple's non OS9 booting Macs– a non-technical, business driven decision to cripple a product.

I'd have to disagree to some extent.

Though it's easy to say that, on the surface, Apple's decision was ego based, and it may have been in part, their decision was mostly based on the master plan they have for the adoption of OSX. Apple cannot sit idly by while one lame company (as you called them :D) single-handedly tries to stall the adoption of their OS.

So Apple did what anyone should do...move on without them. Sooo, what has happened? Well, lo and behold, Quark now has some very serious competition from a company that was ready to move into the future with Apple.

Ego induced CEO urination contest? Perhaps.

Smart business decision? Absolutely.

[macnews]

Originally posted by scan300
That's Quark Publishing System. Expensive. Still won't be ready till 2004 for OSX.

I know a little about their publishing system. The few people that I know who have used it, do not like it - they call it buggy, I don't know since i have never used it. Like you said, it still will not be available for OSX until 04 - maybe. This also doesn't make much sense.

[scan300]

It only makes sense in that it takes longer to write more software. I had a chance to compare a 3rd party Indesign 1.5 Publishing System and a Quark 4 Publishing System at a trade show a few years back.

THey both did the same thing, but the interface was like chalk and cheese. The ID PS was a neat little pallette and an extra galley text editor. The Quark PS had too many windows, loose in design – it felt like you were building the program as you worked.

The Quark system cost about 6 x more than the Indesign system. (The cost differential between ID and Quark are amplified here in Australia.)

[the future]

Originally posted by Rustus Maximus Competition is always there, no matter how hard they may be to find, and monopolies never last forever. They become too comfortable with themselves and the way they have always done things, and there is ALWAYS someone better, faster, smarter coming up behind you..[/B]

For a lot of cases you're right, of course, but sometimes a bad product/solution *will* dominate the market *ad infinitum* just because it became big enough early enough - for example VHS and - of course - DOS/Windows.

[jayscheuerle]

Originally posted by the future
For a lot of cases you're right, of course, but sometimes a bad product/solution *will* dominate the market *ad infinitum* just because it became big enough early enough - for example VHS and - of course - DOS/Windows.

VHS was the standard, but is well on the way to being replaced by DVDs and hard-drive recorders. They had a good run of about 25 years.

Unlike VHS, Windows has evolved dramatically, though the domination here is more about the company than the product. Microsoft has been dominant less than 20 years and already are grasping at straws to find an encore to Windows. Evolution won't overtake Windows, a paradigm shift will. OSX is very similar to Windows and that shift will not be coming from Apple. Somebody will come up with it someday and everyone else will just smack their heads.

ID upped the ante with incorporating better compositing elements into their software, but it's really an evolutionary step that Quark could have made if they weren't so complacent. In another 10-15 years, something completely different by a young, upstart company will change the face of publishing again. That's not that long if you consider how long the printing business existed before computers revolutionized that field.

- j

[Quila]

Originally posted by Fredo Viola
Now we're seeing them pull Premiere away from Mac-users and you know it ain't stoppin there!

That's just because they couldn't compete with Final Cut Pro. Otherwise, their committment to Mac looks great, and that'll only get better now that Macs will finally have better performance than PCs again.

[Quila]

Originally posted by the future
For a lot of cases you're right, of course, but sometimes a bad product/solution *will* dominate the market *ad infinitum* just because it became big enough early enough - for example VHS and - of course - DOS/Windows.
A long time ago, there was a company called Aldus, with a product called PageMaker, which ruled DTP. Then Aldus got cocky and stopped improving PageMaker much. During this time, another company called Quark came out with a better product and trounced PageMaker in the market. Everyone moved to Quark.

Then Adobe bought PageMaker, slapped an Adobe logo on the soon-to-be PageMaker 6, and really made it their product at 6.5. Now it pretty much had feature parity with Xpress in most things, and even was ahead in some areas. But that didn't matter since PageMaker was anathema to large-scale DTP by that time.

At this time, PageMaker 7 was in the works, rewritten with a totally new way of doing things and taking advantage of new technologies (like OS X), and it was going to be the Quark killer. Quark, at this time, had started resting on its laurels as Aldus had done.

Due to market perceptions of the PageMaker brand, Adobe decided to rename PageMaker 7 to InDesign 1.0, which had some growing pains until becoming usable at 1.5 and awesome at 2.0 (they added some templates, toolbars and bug fixes to PageMaker and released it as 7.0 for the corporate and home market).

Will we now see a repeat of the first paragraph?