[MW Forums]

Quark Inc. recently unveiled some new features in its upcoming desktop publishing application QuarkXPress 7. The new version includes open standards as the company works toward making workflows easier for their users. Company officials also addressed increasing competition from Adobe Systems Inc.’s InDesign page layout application. more

[mmcgann11]

I'm sorry...Glen Turpin is completely and totally in denial.
I worked with Quark XPress from version 2.12 through 6.0 (for more than a decade) and finally had enough when the anti-piracy provisions rendered the software useless (and yes, I paid for it) to me and I switched to InDesign 18 months ago.
Aside from the fact that Xpress 6.0 (I can't speak to 6.5) was wildly retro in its UI, it just didn't work as well. Publishing a magazine, it's simpler to get good looking pages with InDesign.
And one other point: Adobe gets the copy protection thing. When I switched computers a couple years ago, I had to spend an hour on the phone with someone from India to get Quark working, that after it had taken weeks to get it working on my other computer when I upgraded from 5.0. When my hard drive failed, I refused to go through that again and switched to InDesign.
I upgraded to InDesign CS 2, painlessly I might add, only to have motherboard fail two weeks later on my G5. I ended up trading it in for a faster model. It took me 30 seconds to re-authorize all of my CS apps. No muss, no fuss, no issues. It just worked.
Quark doesn't get it and treats its customers like it hates them, and Adobe for all its flaws doesn't. Quark's day is over, it might as well be Visicalc to me.
Mike McGann
Editor In Chief
Gotham Baseball magazine,
Gotham Sports Publishing, Inc.

[TheTSArt]

Considering how many years it took Xpress to run natively on OS X... Now we have the Intel change on the horizon--why would any Mac user would risk going (or continuing on) with Quark right now is beyond me.

[spimster]

In reply to:

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Im not concerned; Im engaged by the challenge

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Yeah -- I bought 6.0.
but ONLY because I pretty much had to.
I would NEVER do business with a company as aloof and abusive as Quark, given a choice.
(but I like desktop publishing ... so ...)
But most of the time the icon for XPress in the dock is never clicked. It's mostly Indesign or Freehand.

[Daren_Mitchell]

What's "QuarkXPress"?
Sounds like a very small train going someplace fast...

[skbrn16]

I would like, for once, to read/hear something from Quark stating that they realize their handling of customers partially earned them the reputation that they currently have, and that such treatment is in the past and they are much more customer oriented. All of this focus on what they are going to do with the next version really doesn't matter (to me). As far as I'm concerned it is all smoke and mirrors. However, a bit of contrition on their part would ease my extreme dislike of the company. I most likely wouldn't switch back, but if they were really interested in earning customer loyalty they'd fess up and govel. Even just a little.
Otherwise they can rot away. Besides, I still think they are WAY overpriced.

[tomottoe]

As much as I dislike Quark the company, I still turn green thinking about formatting a 300+ page document in InDesign. So I'm stuck with Xpress unless Adobe someday splices a bunch of Framemaker code into InDesign.
But for those brochures and other short docs, everything is ID.
And this has to be the absolutely the most ironic, absurd comment by any company representative in the history of the world:
There are some who like to take their own path and there are some who like to work in collaboration with their customers and other companies.

[Nobody]

In reply to:

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Quark will use what it calls the Quark Job Jacket, which incorporates detailed workflow and prepress information directly into a QuarkXPress project.

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Mmmmmmm.... we call those docketts, and they're essential in the shop for, um, production productivity. Kinda nails it by focusing on "workflow" issues rather than "artwork" or "art work" niceness, which seems to be all the rage but matters not one bit to me.

[MacTechAspen]

In reply to:

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I still turn green thinking about formatting a 300 page document in InDesign

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Why?

My book is 300 pages and I formatted it in ID. I have never used Quark much, but I am a very experienced desktop publisher. Since I have had limited contact with with Quark I am not sure what tools I am missing that would make my life easier.
I would really like to know.

[altivec]

yes... but will it still have activation? Listening to customers actually means comprehending what they are saying. Customers don't want activation.

[Mississauga]

By the time Quark gets it right... well, you all know.

[leicaman]

In reply to:

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What youve seen from Quark in the past year is that it has reinvented itself and has completely rethought how it interacts with its customers and rethought its position in the market, said Turpin. What you are seeing now is extremely innovative technologies built on standards.

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No, what we're seeing is a company that is desperately trying to survive as they go down the drain. To reverse years of arrogance, lack of innovation or improvements of any kind, and a complete lack of disregard for the meaning of the word customer service.
They're learning. They might luck out, but only at the expesnse of making software less interoperable like the Creative Suite works now. Dream on Quark. Your day is long past. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[rgarbin]

I loved the part about Quark concentrating on making "good software" rather than marketing. Man, these guys have a great sense of humor.
I laughed as I thought about how the program would suddenly, somehow corrupt my project file, usually just minutes before deadline, rendering it completely unusable. Or how it would do the same with my Library files. To insure against these disasters, I would usually backup at least two versions when it saved, which with large files in the days before the G3-G5, would mean that saving files often took thirty seconds or more. Such delays tended to disrupt the creative process, hardly contributing to my overall productivity.
I laughed at that thinking about all the System 6(!) Era "features" that lingered on, even in versions 5 and 6.
I laughed at that remembering the exhorbitant upgrade costs, first from 68000 to PowerPC, then from Version 4 to 5, which added next to nothing to the program's power that I already didn't have thanks to extensions.
I laughed because I remembered the frequent crashes THAT STILL HAPPEN that don't seem to happen in ID.
Quark may indeed pull itself out of this mess, but from where I stand, it's too little too late -- that is unless they offer a $50 upgrade from 6 to 7. OR - if they maybe they end up with the development of Freehand as part of the Adobe-Macromedia merger. Then maybe, MAYBE, I'll stay with Xpress. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
RG

[mahenry]

In reply to:

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Listening to customers actually means comprehending what they are saying. Customers don't want activation.

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well, at least you didn't try to sneak in an "adobe is better" statement.
activation is there because companies would otherwise get ripped off. its up to the business to decide how they combat this problem - and don't try to say it isn't. quark's done the same thing adobe is now.
at quark's fault is they tend to be a little bit behind in one fashion or another. and i don't entirely fault them for it, but they could stand to make better decisions.
back when the imac came out, my college newspaper had a hell of a time installing quark 4 on their computers since the activation dongle wasn't USB.
quark's a different kind of company. it seems to lack vision at times, rather it be in the methods it uses to inhibit piracy or in a general business sense. it's prolly guilty of sitting on its laurels. but it lacks the pockets adobe has. and that might even be a result of greed. i think most companies exhibiting market dominance would parlay that into some sort of IPO.
but i've used quark and i liked it. i don't understand why quark seems to be five times more hated than microsoft. perhaps because it partially jumped ship for windows?
i'm curious to know what quark would have to do to actually get on mac users' good sides.