A little tongue in cheek I know - but the reason there still is a delay in Mac OS X adoption and the sale of high end G4s must still be down to the graphics/industrial base of the Mac market - Photoshop & Quark Express

And let’s be frank - even in Classic quark works more effortlessley than Indesign 2 - people were slow to adopt when Quark went from 3 to 4, and it doesn’t appear that much is going to change this time around  

Well, of course not. You’re talking about a lot of huge organizations, and even changing from Quark 3 to 4 is a major undertaking, and they’re not going to do it unless they’re absolutely sure it won’t result in a second of downtime.

Making a sea change to OS X, well, you can multiply that by a hundred or so. It’ll be a few years before the publishing industry makes the switch on any grand scale.

As far as people grousing about how Pshop and Quark for OS X aren’t out yet, well, y’all should shut your pieholes. This is two thirds of the holy trinity of publishing apps, and publishing is a heeuuuge market for Apple. Those programs are also their respective companies’ flagship products. And they’re both really complex programs.

I say they should take their sweet time and make sure everything works properly. If it takes another year, it takes another year. But rushing either to market in less than fabulous shape would be far more damaging than any time lag.

For all Steve Job’s asides about wanting Photoshop for X out now, I don’t think he’d say much different. Frustrated designers would be bad for Apple, too.

The thing that is so funny is how much Quark sucks. Its bloated, unstable, it has an archaic interface, for starters. There are so many more reasons to hate Quark, both the corporation and the program, that I won’t go into here.

InDesign still has alot of problems (for one things its dog-slow), but its shaping up to be a Quark killer.

The only reason Quark is so popular is because it has sucked less than the competition, most notably Pagemaker, in a few key areas. Give ID a little more time (maybe by 3.0) and it will most likely take Quark’s “least crappy DTP app” crown.

<does I hate QuarkXPress dance>

I really have to disagree with you Alistair. I work for a medium-sized daily newspaper in Ohio and we are feeling the same pinch that almost every other publication is right now. Advertising revenue has been down the drain for the last six months. So the only expenditures that most publishing shops are making right now are for things that have already been budgeted and for emegency fixes. Since the publishing software isn’t even out yet, it certainly hasn’t been budgeted.
Our IT guy can’t even get the publisher to let him buy a single copy of Photoshop 7 for evaluation.

So until revenues come back, the major publishing titles probably aren’t going to sell very well. I suspect they know this too and aren’t in any particular hurry to ship their products.

I haven’t even touched on the fact that OSX is still a new and unproven OS in the eyes of many IT managers. Realistically, it still is a version 1.3 product.

-Dan

Wow, Dan! Good point! I knew the publishing industry was hurtin’, but I never related it to OS X adoption. <V-8 head-slap>

On 2002-03-22 13:44, DaiMac wrote:
The thing that is so funny is how much Quark sucks. Its bloated, unstable, it has an archaic interface, for starters. There are so many more reasons to hate Quark, both the corporation and the program, that I won’t go into here.

i’ve never experienced quark as unstable. and i’ve been using it on a daily basis since version 3 now. it’s interface is not archaic it just never adopted the 3D-look. well i couldn’t care less. it is a workhorse and it does what it is supposed to be, reliably.

InDesign still has alot of problems (for one things its dog-slow), but its shaping up to be a Quark killer.

yes. indesign is a quark killer. it does everything better than quark does. no doubt about that. but remember: quark has been a huge investment for every company (both financially and an educational sense). they are not going to throw this away too easy.

i would. i have tried indesign and i really want to use it.

The only reason Quark is so popular is because it has sucked less than the competition, most notably Pagemaker, in a few key areas. Give ID a little more time (maybe by 3.0) and it will most likely take Quark’s “least crappy DTP app” crown.

‘nuff said. quark is not “crappy” (see my comments above), but it’s far away from anything i would call innovative.

i do feel a little insecure about indesign, though. did you ever consider a adobe-monopoly in print production? do we really want to have that kind of situation?

what i would really like is: a strong second competitor, like indesign. and a quarkXpress that really tries to bring new life to desktop publishing.

On 2002-03-24 15:32, Anonymous wrote:

i’ve never experienced quark as unstable. and i’ve been using it on a daily basis since version 3 now. it’s interface is not archaic it just never adopted the 3D-look. well i couldn’t care less. it is a workhorse and it does what it is supposed to be, reliably.

Its weird, it seems to vary with every place I go. First job I had using Quark (version 3), I had no problems. Second Job, Quark crashed upwards of 5 times/day no matter what system it was running on, what OS, etc. Current Job, I get about a crash per day.

Glad you can rely on Quark, wish I had that much faith

Here is a fun thing: make a new quark document, a picture box, and Get Picture. Then go to a folder that contains a mix of files, say EPS, Tiff, Quark Docs and PDFs. Now highlight the PDF. On every nearly every system I’ve used thats a guaranteed lock.

How about image management, while we’re at it? I shouldn’t have to spend any more money or time on managing my images after spending 700 to 800 dollars on Quark, but I do. Just renaming the HD they are on breaks every image, and Quark isn’t smart enough to have any type of batch correction for this unless all your images are in one folder. At least Indesign handles graphics better, albeit slowly.

Every tried to turn text into a box? Works properly on about 1/3 of the systems I’ve used Quark on.

BTW, when I said it was Archaic I meant its non-compliant with both Appearance and Navigation Services. Again, considering the cost of the program I don’t think its unreasonable to expect this. Quark is the only program I use that reminds me of System 6, and not its good points either.

Don’t get me started on Quark’s handling of RAM….

yes. indesign is a quark killer. it does everything better than quark does. no doubt about that. but remember: quark has been a huge investment for every company (both financially and an educational sense). they are not going to throw this away too easy.

i would. i have tried indesign and i really want to use it.

Thats the same thing my company IT manager said when I brought it up. Three things negate that, in my mind:

1) Adobe offers a $300 rebate on InDesign for Quark owners. That means you’re looking at about $200 for Indesign.
2) Indesign is ready for OS X. If Photoshop 7 delivers and is not only compatible with but enhanced for OS X, I think we’ll start seeing designers take the plunge.
3) InDesign actually opens Quark documents and does it well.

Keep in mind, Quark is as bad as MS in some ways, esp in their treatment of customers. In fact they’re worse; at least MS is usually polite to you, even if they are screwing you over. I’ve been verbally assaulted twice trying to call Quark tech support.

what i would really like is: a strong second competitor, like indesign. and a quarkXpress that really tries to bring new life to desktop publishing.

Quark is the MS clone here. While I agree Adobe bears watching, they have so far not done things that MS would have. For instance, notice the plethora of graphics programs that accept Photoshop Compatible plug-ins. If Adobe were an abusive monopoly along the lines of MS, they would have long ago worked at changing their plug-in spec to prevent this.

Right now, as a designer and someone who uses Quark heavily every day, I trust people who make software that works over those that make aging bloatware.

The Quark-MS analogy goes further; take MS word for Mac. Version 5, like Quark 3, was fairly decent. Then word 6 came out, and anyone who had a Mac at the time doesn’t need me to tell them just how FUBAR that was. Quark is the same way with v4. Quark still has a bunch of major issues with OS 9 to resolve in 4.1, I haven’t used 5 yet so maybe its fixed, but still.

One more thing: i’ve never seen a program have so many damaged files, often damaged after not being touched in a month or two, as Quark. I shouldn’t have to own an add-on (Markztools) just to fix them.

Ok, thats all the Quark bashing I have time for today, I’m sure I can provide more from work tommorow if necessary

Wait a minute: just what the heck does all this have to do with the old Richard Benjamin tv show?

“Ficus, where did you find this?”
“Behind the Roddenberry bush.”

Glad you can rely on Quark, wish I had that much faith

true. quark seems to be unstable for some people. i have worked in four different agencies and i everywhere had to luck to own a stable copy of quark on a sometimes unstable system (lucky me).

1) Adobe offers a $300 rebate on InDesign for Quark owners. That means you’re looking at about $200 for Indesign.
2) Indesign is ready for OS X. If Photoshop 7 delivers and is not only compatible with but enhanced for OS X, I think we’ll start seeing designers take the plunge.
3) InDesign actually opens Quark documents and does it well.

2) being a one-person show it’s easy (even advisable) to make the change after the release of photoshop. it is problematic however to try this in a bigger company. for the sake of compatibility it would be best if the whole design department made the switch at once (indesin documents don’t open in quark). that means: each and every person have to have a level of knowledge that allows them to get their daily work done, even under pressure - all this with a software they are not familiar with. i know i could deal with that. but i am not so sure about the rest of our designers.
3) more or less perfect. hyphenation is different sometimes which leads to textboxes that looks slightly odd compared to the original.
this is not a big deal for a 12 page brochure, but what do you do with a 60 page catalogue? search to whole document for errors and then change them back manually?

Quark is the MS clone here. While I agree Adobe bears watching, they have so far not done things that MS would have. For instance, notice the plethora of graphics programs that accept Photoshop Compatible plug-ins. If Adobe were an abusive monopoly along the lines of MS, they would have long ago worked at changing their plug-in spec to prevent this.

i know. that’s was what i wanted to say with “second strong competitor”. i want adobe to end quarks monopoly. but i don’t want adobe to become the monopoly (they have photoshop and illustrator, too, after all. THAT is what i call market dominance!)

On 2002-03-24 15:32, Anonymous wrote:
i’ve never experienced quark as unstable. and i’ve been using it on a daily basis since version 3 now. it’s interface is not archaic it just never adopted the 3D-look. well i couldn’t care less. it is a workhorse and it does what it is supposed to be, reliably.

We got off the upgrade train (it’s not as if in Quark’s case it’s a particularly fast train) for XPress at 3.12. Later versions were increasingly unstable and didn’t add substantive new features, added them in a poor way, or made existing ones worse (a trip through the Print dialog maze, anyone?)

Myself and other design houses I’m familiar with are very fed up with Quark (note the distinction between Quark the company and XPress the product). We did a few small projects with InDesign 1.0 and are looking much more seriously at 2.0 under OS X. Photoshop is soon to arrive, Illustrator 10 runs there already and print shops are coming around for ID output. I hope that the writing’s on the wall for Quark. I’m ready to toss XPress in the circular file and I’ve been using it since version 1.0 (I don’t know who it was at my college that decided to get XPress instead of PageMaker, but I’ve often thanked them for the decision since )

(P.S. The “Shift” key not only provides a handy indentation for “Z,” but used judiciously, it creates a visual “milestone” for sentences that makes things much easier for the reader. But then, as a print professional, you already knew that. )

Hello All-

Well I saw this topic and just HAD to thorw in my $.02 worth.  I’m the head Mac guy at a med size newspaper in Southern California.  We are currently going through a MAJOR system overhaul.  We used to use the Morris publishing system (DOS based) but are well underway to converting the ENTIRE company to Mac.  In the last year I have installed just over 100 new G4’s.  The new publishing system we are converting to is called DTI.  We are the lucky ones to be the Beta site for there new version of the Retail Ad product, called AdSpeed.  We were a ALL Quark newspaper until we found out that the new product requires Java to talk to our Sun servers which holds all of our ads and page layout components.  AdSpeed was also designed by DTI to use InDesign as there front end to the database, because Quark would not step up to the plate and update there product to work with Java and OSX.  So we are well on the way to being a OSX only newspaper.  There have been several growing pains, since there were no footsteps to follow in, but over all things are working out MUCH better than expected. The hardest part was prying quark out of the hands of the users and getting them to use Indesign, Illustrator 10, and we just got Photoshop 7 for the whole company.  People don’t like change, until you force them they won’t.  But now that they have learned it they love it!!!

John
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thanks sandpilot, this is the kind of post that ought to go some way to giving Quark a jolt - but you have not given any indication as to whether you think Indesign or Quark has any leverage as to the quality of their product