It's only going to get worse if Apple stays on the same path. Most people here don't seem to get it. The G4 needs to go, Apple needs to create more options for their customers, at lower price points, and they need to push in the enterprise market. I'm for the PPC if someone can maintain development, otherwise x86-64 is the only way to go. Steve Jobs isn't dumb, I'm sure he'll pull everything together in 2003. But no one really wants to see another G4.
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Quark's Response
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PPC has got to go
I agree.......
How many people out there will not switch because the clock speed of the mac is slower. And not only is the clock speed lower, the machine is slower...weather this is because of the operating system or not is a mute point....for most every day takst the pc is much faster.
PPC was a great idea, and it is a product,,,,just not enough r and d went into it.
Mac move to the x86 architecture makes sence.....
They could still sell hardware,,,i am sure there is something they could do to make themachines not boot windows, or other machines boot os x. Not that I agree with that at this point.
Apple needs to make some hard decissions...it is very much on the ropes this year, and I don't see a lot of people that understand this.
PPC has got to be faster than x86 this year, or it has to go.
What about moving to the itanium?
Steve better do something. performance is getting to be an issue....
I have a dual 800,,,my 1.8 intel screams in comparison at 1/3 the ram. Photoshop is faster, everything is faster. Lets not even talk about surfing a webpage!!!
I agree.......
How many people out there will not switch because the clock speed of the mac is slower. And not only is the clock speed lower, the machine is slower...weather this is because of the operating system or not is a mute point....for most every day takst the pc is much faster.
PPC was a great idea, and it is a product,,,,just not enough r and d went into it.
Mac move to the x86 architecture makes sence.....
They could still sell hardware,,,i am sure there is something they could do to make themachines not boot windows, or other machines boot os x. Not that I agree with that at this point.
Apple needs to make some hard decissions...it is very much on the ropes this year, and I don't see a lot of people that understand this.
PPC has got to be faster than x86 this year, or it has to go.
What about moving to the itanium?
Steve better do something. performance is getting to be an issue....
I have a dual 800,,,my 1.8 intel screams in comparison at 1/3 the ram. Photoshop is faster, everything is faster. Lets not even talk about surfing a webpage!!!
quark not that dumb
The reason quark is so popular is not because of its gui,,,its because of all the plug-ins and ad ons, and propriatary softare publishing houses have written for it.
I see no reason why they would not go to the pc.
I also think quark might be better off with out the mac....less platforms to support.
So they may be trying to get people to switch to the pc.
The reason quark is so popular is not because of its gui,,,its because of all the plug-ins and ad ons, and propriatary softare publishing houses have written for it.
I see no reason why they would not go to the pc.
I also think quark might be better off with out the mac....less platforms to support.
So they may be trying to get people to switch to the pc.
Switch to pc
nah, i love my mac to much,,,,,i just wish apple could figure out how to increase the market share a bit. trouble is design shops and webshops are kicking the mac out....i freelance so I see this a bit. there are tons of all pc design shops now. I bring my powebook and refuse to work on them. They do suck, but explain that to the people who have the purchasing power....
one platform cost 3,500 and runs al the graphics apps
one platform costs 1,500 and runs allthe graphics apps, and all the other stuff i want my company employees to run.
Its a no brainer for the guys who purchase....
apple needs to do something!
nah, i love my mac to much,,,,,i just wish apple could figure out how to increase the market share a bit. trouble is design shops and webshops are kicking the mac out....i freelance so I see this a bit. there are tons of all pc design shops now. I bring my powebook and refuse to work on them. They do suck, but explain that to the people who have the purchasing power....
one platform cost 3,500 and runs al the graphics apps
one platform costs 1,500 and runs allthe graphics apps, and all the other stuff i want my company employees to run.
Its a no brainer for the guys who purchase....
apple needs to do something!
This thread has derailed...
There is absolutely no correlation between Apple hardware performance and the lack of Quark for OS X.
NONE.
This is an issue of Quark not being able to run natively on Apple's OS. Possibility 1) As stated before they may be deliberately dragging their feet in order to get enough shops to switch to PeeCee to make NOT developing for the Mac a 'smart move'. Possibility 2) Again, as stated before they may be trying to engineer the new version so all the 'aftermarket' products don't become unusable - Upgrading to Quark is one thing - upgrading it as well as all your prepress junk, checkers, utilities etc. is an entirely different beast. Possibility 3) They're strapped. Starting from scratch on an app that relies on an industry that's -70% from flush sounds like a disaster. A recession is not the time for change, as it were.
A couple of other notes: Apple was(is?) offering a free copy of InDesign with a new desktop - I think to some degree Apple saw exactly what this guy from Quark is talking about: Shops were bailing on the Mac platform in general for faster hardware (than they had) and maybe some other benefits. So I think Apple's reaction was to try and stem the flow and offer an incentive to stay. A BIG incentive. I suppose by stating that Apple and Quark are "closer than ever" I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is helping keep their coffers full too.
Anyway. These are just some thoughts. The ones claiming bad performance need to provide some sort of solid foundation for their arguments... Compare same-versions to same-versions. The ones touting a loss of marketshare, again, got stats? And how does this compare to overall growth? (read: 3% of 20 million is more than 3% of 10 million)
There is absolutely no correlation between Apple hardware performance and the lack of Quark for OS X.
NONE.
This is an issue of Quark not being able to run natively on Apple's OS. Possibility 1) As stated before they may be deliberately dragging their feet in order to get enough shops to switch to PeeCee to make NOT developing for the Mac a 'smart move'. Possibility 2) Again, as stated before they may be trying to engineer the new version so all the 'aftermarket' products don't become unusable - Upgrading to Quark is one thing - upgrading it as well as all your prepress junk, checkers, utilities etc. is an entirely different beast. Possibility 3) They're strapped. Starting from scratch on an app that relies on an industry that's -70% from flush sounds like a disaster. A recession is not the time for change, as it were.
A couple of other notes: Apple was(is?) offering a free copy of InDesign with a new desktop - I think to some degree Apple saw exactly what this guy from Quark is talking about: Shops were bailing on the Mac platform in general for faster hardware (than they had) and maybe some other benefits. So I think Apple's reaction was to try and stem the flow and offer an incentive to stay. A BIG incentive. I suppose by stating that Apple and Quark are "closer than ever" I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is helping keep their coffers full too.
Anyway. These are just some thoughts. The ones claiming bad performance need to provide some sort of solid foundation for their arguments... Compare same-versions to same-versions. The ones touting a loss of marketshare, again, got stats? And how does this compare to overall growth? (read: 3% of 20 million is more than 3% of 10 million)
Re: Mac's are dying
Originally posted by linescreen
We as mac users have to face some facts.
1) the market share of Mac's this year has continued to fall even with all the switcher ads. The mac market share is around 3% and falling.
Please provide some numbers. I've heard that it has actually gone up.
3) Design houses are moving to the pc....I have seen it hear in nyc.
As far as I know pre-press houses still prefer to use files produced on Macs. Do you have any names of switching design houses?
4) If a company does more than just publishing, there Senior IT people may make the entire company PC. They feel it is easier to support....and it may be.
I do think that departments outside of design are more and more becoming PC but I doubt that there is any big move in the design departments. Many designers simply won't allow it.
5) The mac really does not compare in performance to a new pc these days....os x is still sluggish at times compared to jaguar.
Please explain what you mean. Jaguar IS the latest version of OS X, and it isn't that sluggish on the new Mac's.
MDA
Originally posted by linescreen
We as mac users have to face some facts.
1) the market share of Mac's this year has continued to fall even with all the switcher ads. The mac market share is around 3% and falling.
Please provide some numbers. I've heard that it has actually gone up.
3) Design houses are moving to the pc....I have seen it hear in nyc.
As far as I know pre-press houses still prefer to use files produced on Macs. Do you have any names of switching design houses?
4) If a company does more than just publishing, there Senior IT people may make the entire company PC. They feel it is easier to support....and it may be.
I do think that departments outside of design are more and more becoming PC but I doubt that there is any big move in the design departments. Many designers simply won't allow it.
5) The mac really does not compare in performance to a new pc these days....os x is still sluggish at times compared to jaguar.
Please explain what you mean. Jaguar IS the latest version of OS X, and it isn't that sluggish on the new Mac's.
MDA
An x86 mac won't be able to emulate PPC, so existing software won't run on the new x86 Macs and software written for the new machines won't run on our old PPC macs. The only reason PPC macs were able to emulate a 68K is because the 68K is so much simpler and slower than a PPC that it could be emulated at a reasonable speed. Since the PPC is so much more complex and not that much slower than x86 CPUs, it wouldn't be possible to emulate the PPC at a reasonable speed, so we won't see any emulator (or if we do, it would be similar in speed to VirtualPC).
One of two things will happen: software developers would be reluctant to buy the new machines, so no new software would be written for them, or they would drop support for older Macs since it wouldn't be worth the effort, so owners of old Macs would be left out in the cold completely.
Since the Mac market is already so small, splintering it further like this would be suicide. Also, unless Apple used proprietary hardware, people would be able to run MacOS X on other PCs, so everyone would stop buying Apple hardware.
For these reasons, I can guarantee that switching to X86 would be the death of Apple.
That old argument.
Emulators? It wouldn't take much for developers to port to x86. All it would take is some recompiling.
Suicide is staying with an architecture that's not that's not properly maintained. For example, the G4.
And here is the proof that Oracle supports Mac OS X if you want to write him again:
http://www.oracle.com/start/apple/intro.html?src=1439096&Act=4
I wrote him myself letting him know I'd like him to
think more about his position.
http://www.oracle.com/start/apple/intro.html?src=1439096&Act=4
I wrote him myself letting him know I'd like him to
think more about his position.
Re: PPC has got to go
Funny, you run are able to run so fast, yet spell so badly. Is your PC that slow it can't even spellcheck?
Funny, you run are able to run so fast, yet spell so badly. Is your PC that slow it can't even spellcheck?
1] The Macs are not _that_ slow, they're fine for most stuff but maybe 3D/games.
2] switching to x86-64 (aka Hammer) would be the dumbest thing to do - what if AMD runs out of luck and money and goes bankrupt (they do have problems and are betting their farm on hammer) at the end of 2003? does apple "switch" to IA-64?
3] if the rumored performance of the IBM 970 is 3/4 of what people say Apple will be fine off - and the 970 is made to scale easily.
4] you all switch to PC for what I care - I've been working with macs and currently work on a PC. and I am loosing too much time with fiddling with the machine and software, I'll go back to MacOS as soon as I can afford a new Mac (jan-feb).
2] switching to x86-64 (aka Hammer) would be the dumbest thing to do - what if AMD runs out of luck and money and goes bankrupt (they do have problems and are betting their farm on hammer) at the end of 2003? does apple "switch" to IA-64?
3] if the rumored performance of the IBM 970 is 3/4 of what people say Apple will be fine off - and the 970 is made to scale easily.
4] you all switch to PC for what I care - I've been working with macs and currently work on a PC. and I am loosing too much time with fiddling with the machine and software, I'll go back to MacOS as soon as I can afford a new Mac (jan-feb).
You are dead on. This new PowerPC is based on IBM's Power4 architecture (which is kicking ass all over the place these days) and should be fairly amazing. Unfortunately for marketing, its clock speed probably isn't going to be much higher than what we see today, which might be difficult to sell even though its performance will trounce anything Intel has by then.
Re: Mac's are dying
Yes, i have seen the same thing in my town, our hardware supplier say they havent made a corporate Mac installation since this summer. Its all PC now, more bang per buck.
Agree, you can run W2K fine on a old PC while Jaguar wont even start on an older Mac. I dont think its usable with anything less than Dual 800 and >= 1gb ram
Dito.
Jaguar?
Jaguar will not start on an old machine? What? Are you on crack or something? OS X runs fine on my iBook and my B&W w/400 G4. Both have the RAM maxed, but it is unix, unix loves lots of RAM.
I run all sorts of pro-apps like FCP, Photoshop and AfterEffects, and they all run good as well.
I've seen WindowsXP run on an old wintel box and it runs like crap with all the candy on, the only edge to it is you can turn the candy off.
IBM's PPC970 is going to kick some booty. I imagine that it would debut clocking in around 2Ghz. Early testing has shown that at 1Ghz it is nearly twice as fast as a 1Ghz G4. If IBM is right this chip @1.8Ghz will be just as fast as a 2.8Ghz Pentium at specINT2000 and specFP2000. Sounds like a winner to me. Not to mention it will still run 32bit PPC code. IBM would like nothing better than to watch Intel and Microsoft get it handed to them. IBM wants Apple to pound them hard in the desktop arena.
-mark
Jaguar will not start on an old machine? What? Are you on crack or something? OS X runs fine on my iBook and my B&W w/400 G4. Both have the RAM maxed, but it is unix, unix loves lots of RAM.
I run all sorts of pro-apps like FCP, Photoshop and AfterEffects, and they all run good as well.
I've seen WindowsXP run on an old wintel box and it runs like crap with all the candy on, the only edge to it is you can turn the candy off.
IBM's PPC970 is going to kick some booty. I imagine that it would debut clocking in around 2Ghz. Early testing has shown that at 1Ghz it is nearly twice as fast as a 1Ghz G4. If IBM is right this chip @1.8Ghz will be just as fast as a 2.8Ghz Pentium at specINT2000 and specFP2000. Sounds like a winner to me. Not to mention it will still run 32bit PPC code. IBM would like nothing better than to watch Intel and Microsoft get it handed to them. IBM wants Apple to pound them hard in the desktop arena.
-mark
Market share links
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17837.html
above says shift, but no increase,,,and the shift is away from graphics people.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-893232.html
cnet, says market share is shrinking.
http://www.wininsider.com/news/comments.aspx?mid=2347
puts market share at 2% and shrinking.
There are tons of articles about apple once again loosing market share.
And the reality is that you can do the graphics work on the pc, and they are so much cheaper now....that corporate sales are going to disapare if apple does not do something. I don't know what it is,,,,but we need speed, and cheaper pro models.
T
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17837.html
above says shift, but no increase,,,and the shift is away from graphics people.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-893232.html
cnet, says market share is shrinking.
http://www.wininsider.com/news/comments.aspx?mid=2347
puts market share at 2% and shrinking.
There are tons of articles about apple once again loosing market share.
And the reality is that you can do the graphics work on the pc, and they are so much cheaper now....that corporate sales are going to disapare if apple does not do something. I don't know what it is,,,,but we need speed, and cheaper pro models.
T
Re: Re: Mac's are dying
What a bunch of horse$h!t! We run W2k here on Compaq DeskPros (PIIs/PIIIs 400 MHz) at work and they're DOG SLOW compared to my old iMac (G3 400 MHz) running Mac OS X (10.2)! W2k is pathetic in performance and XP isn't much better!!
What a bunch of horse$h!t! We run W2k here on Compaq DeskPros (PIIs/PIIIs 400 MHz) at work and they're DOG SLOW compared to my old iMac (G3 400 MHz) running Mac OS X (10.2)! W2k is pathetic in performance and XP isn't much better!!
Re: Re: Re: Mac's are dying
When comparing old systems you have to use the same timeframe, when P3 400 came out the baddest Mac was a grey 200 mp, try running X on that... As for the performance on your Compaq boxes (besides that brand computers almost always have slow harddrives) its probably a RAM issue.
When comparing old systems you have to use the same timeframe, when P3 400 came out the baddest Mac was a grey 200 mp, try running X on that... As for the performance on your Compaq boxes (besides that brand computers almost always have slow harddrives) its probably a RAM issue.
SQL and Oraccle not on Mac?? Um....
Okay, so SQL Server by Microshaft is not on Mac, by MySQL is. So is Oracle. So what is Quark blathering about here? Are they trying to say that Apple's Xserve, or even their desktops, can do this? Well, I think that's hog-wash.
I haven't been in the publishing industry for 3 years now. When I left, InDesign was not available, but PageMaker and FrameMaker was. I really liked PageMaker, and I'm not sure why they scrapped it's name in sake of a new product name. Anyway, Quark was always one of those programs that was so bug riddled that it was barely usable. However, since I was still in college we had to learn the tools of the trade. What a monumental pain it could be to use Quark then-- and from what I've heard, now. Most everyone I know that is still in print-publishing uses InDesign now. Quark is dead.
Okay, so SQL Server by Microshaft is not on Mac, by MySQL is. So is Oracle. So what is Quark blathering about here? Are they trying to say that Apple's Xserve, or even their desktops, can do this? Well, I think that's hog-wash.
I haven't been in the publishing industry for 3 years now. When I left, InDesign was not available, but PageMaker and FrameMaker was. I really liked PageMaker, and I'm not sure why they scrapped it's name in sake of a new product name. Anyway, Quark was always one of those programs that was so bug riddled that it was barely usable. However, since I was still in college we had to learn the tools of the trade. What a monumental pain it could be to use Quark then-- and from what I've heard, now. Most everyone I know that is still in print-publishing uses InDesign now. Quark is dead.
I have bee using InDesign quite successfully for a year and a half now and I love it. I did so out of necessity because I was not going to be dragging my system down with Classic Mode and livig with OS 9 was out of the question. But I was pleasantly suprised with the ease of use and powerful features. The only dependency is to find print service shops that support InDesign or to understand how to export files for shops that did not support it. By the way, it was not hard to find an InDesign-friendly shop. Also, InDesign opens up my Quark Xpress files beautifully, so I've been able to edit existing work with no trouble.
When Quark Xpress does arrive for Mac OS X, I will give it a try. But since I am quite happy with InDesign, there would have to be some extraordinarily compelling features in there for it to motivate me to switch back.
The reason I mention this is that if anyone had fears of upgrading to Mac OS X but was afraid to because of the lack of Quark support for Mac OS X, and didn't think InDesign would be a viable option from a workflow point of view, then here is a testimony of at least one happy designer who has found InDesign to compare favorably to Quark Xpress and is enjoying DTP production in Mac OS X full time.
Also, InDesign opens up my Quark Xpress files beautifully, so I've been able to edit existing work with no trouble.When Quark Xpress does arrive for Mac OS X, I will give it a try. But since I am quite happy with InDesign, there would have to be some extraordinarily compelling features in there for it to motivate me to switch back.
The reason I mention this is that if anyone had fears of upgrading to Mac OS X but was afraid to because of the lack of Quark support for Mac OS X, and didn't think InDesign would be a viable option from a workflow point of view, then here is a testimony of at least one happy designer who has found InDesign to compare favorably to Quark Xpress and is enjoying DTP production in Mac OS X full time.
Market share links
The links provided reflect Apple's global market share compared to total worldwide PC sales. Two things are going on here of note. First, some of the figures are wildly inaccurate (no way is Apple's global market share at or under 2%) reflecting the reporter's lack of understanding or sloppy analysis by the reporting agency. Second, these figures mostly reflect the shift in consumer and education sales.
The former market has been badly hit by the recession. The latter has seen a concentrated effort by Dell to take market share away from Apple (which has been very successful, by the way).
But none of this affects the publishing market in which Apple continues to have the lion's share of the market. Even the first link posted notes that there has been little shift in the graphics market.
Yes, ad revenues are down and some publications have closed their doors. In a recession, this is not surprising. Publishers run on razor thin margins and increases in paper costs combined with drops in subscription rates due to the the recession has meant retrenchment from previous expansions in the print industry. By no means, however, is publishing "dead". It isn't in the pink, but it's a long way from moribund.
Another point worth noting is that the only reliable "market data" Quark could have would necesarily be based on sales of it's own products. And what is happening there is that fewer Mac based publishers are upgrading and many are switching to InDesign. This doesn't mean publishers are switching to PCs, it means Mac publishers finally have a competitive product and can afford to stop supporting a company whose idea of customer satisfaction is that they should be satisfied with whatever Quark foists on them.
Quark is desperate to find a way to reverse sales declines and, unfortunately, is looking to do so without addressing the fundamental problems responsible for its declines: which is that when you buy their software you are forced to buy a piece of Fred Ebrahimi's paranoid and self defeating business philosophy in which customers are not to be trusted and quality runs a distant second to profits.
This is not news to insiders at Quark. Attempts to divorce Fred from day to day operations there have been spectacular failures, resulting in broken promises to publishers and a public relations debacle for the company. His "out of context" rant is typical of his attitude toward his customer base which is (in my opinion) directly responsible for the company's tenous position today.
As long as viable competitive products to XPress and QPS are offered by a well run company that understands the concept behind real customer support, I predict that Quark's revenues will continue to decline.
Fear not.
The links provided reflect Apple's global market share compared to total worldwide PC sales. Two things are going on here of note. First, some of the figures are wildly inaccurate (no way is Apple's global market share at or under 2%) reflecting the reporter's lack of understanding or sloppy analysis by the reporting agency. Second, these figures mostly reflect the shift in consumer and education sales.
The former market has been badly hit by the recession. The latter has seen a concentrated effort by Dell to take market share away from Apple (which has been very successful, by the way).
But none of this affects the publishing market in which Apple continues to have the lion's share of the market. Even the first link posted notes that there has been little shift in the graphics market.
Yes, ad revenues are down and some publications have closed their doors. In a recession, this is not surprising. Publishers run on razor thin margins and increases in paper costs combined with drops in subscription rates due to the the recession has meant retrenchment from previous expansions in the print industry. By no means, however, is publishing "dead". It isn't in the pink, but it's a long way from moribund.
Another point worth noting is that the only reliable "market data" Quark could have would necesarily be based on sales of it's own products. And what is happening there is that fewer Mac based publishers are upgrading and many are switching to InDesign. This doesn't mean publishers are switching to PCs, it means Mac publishers finally have a competitive product and can afford to stop supporting a company whose idea of customer satisfaction is that they should be satisfied with whatever Quark foists on them.
Quark is desperate to find a way to reverse sales declines and, unfortunately, is looking to do so without addressing the fundamental problems responsible for its declines: which is that when you buy their software you are forced to buy a piece of Fred Ebrahimi's paranoid and self defeating business philosophy in which customers are not to be trusted and quality runs a distant second to profits.
This is not news to insiders at Quark. Attempts to divorce Fred from day to day operations there have been spectacular failures, resulting in broken promises to publishers and a public relations debacle for the company. His "out of context" rant is typical of his attitude toward his customer base which is (in my opinion) directly responsible for the company's tenous position today.
As long as viable competitive products to XPress and QPS are offered by a well run company that understands the concept behind real customer support, I predict that Quark's revenues will continue to decline.
Re: Mac's are dying
Where in this post do you talk about marketing? You are talking about performance and marketshare. I would argue that Apple's marketing is second to none in quality and style. Do you think dancing "bunnies" or butterflies riding bikes in NYC is better? Whatever.
BMW's marketshare is less than the Mac's by the way, does that mean we should all switch to Ford?
If you wanna use a crappy cheap PC with horrible color management and bad UI elements that make no sense and ask 6 differnet ways how your network is set up and has a higher per machine support cost, go ahead. It's your own funeral.
Where in this post do you talk about marketing? You are talking about performance and marketshare. I would argue that Apple's marketing is second to none in quality and style. Do you think dancing "bunnies" or butterflies riding bikes in NYC is better? Whatever.
BMW's marketshare is less than the Mac's by the way, does that mean we should all switch to Ford?
If you wanna use a crappy cheap PC with horrible color management and bad UI elements that make no sense and ask 6 differnet ways how your network is set up and has a higher per machine support cost, go ahead. It's your own funeral.