[OM_user]

Yes, I got a good chuckle from that part as well. Making "good" software. Wow, they really do live in their own dream world don't they? It may have been called "good" at one point in time, but that was when the standards were considerably lower. In 2005, QuarkXPress cannot, IMHO be considered "good" software. The only thing they have going for them is installed user base and dinosaur designers who positively refuse to learn anything new. God forbid they should exercise a few brain cells to doing something a better way.
They really aren't that unlike Microsoft and Windows. Large installed user base and users who refuse to see that anything out there is better. But little by little, people are coming around and realizing there's a better way and a better program, and, more importantly, a better company.
If I had been writing this a few months back, I would have been lamenting the fact that those very dinosaurs had gotten their way at the company I work at, and we were switching to XPress 6.5, from 4.1. I didn't give up the fight though, and finally showed and convinced our VP of creative that ID CS was the correct path to take. We'll be making the move (finally!!) in the next couple of months. Sure, there will be a few complainers, but already from what I've been able to show them of ID CS, and especially ID CS2, with it's wealth of awesome features, there are many who are actually excited about this transition. Excited to actually be able to work more efficiently, and not worry about their main page layout app unexpectedly quitting on them in the middle of important work, only to find the file corrupted when they try to open it back up. Excited to be able to implement basic photoshop style features to artwork directly inside their page layout app. And many other things that this move will bring.
I'm sorry, but I too believe Quark is in denial. They're losing it big time. We work with the largest commercial printer in the world. They have thousands of customers, of all types, and more and more stories of customers switching to ID are coming from them. Change is in the wind. Quark has abused their user base for far too long with shoddy implementations of their app, rude customer support, and treating us all like criminals. It's too late now. They should have paid closer attention when they had the chance.

[jnmorrison]

Way back when Quark was at version 3.32, I heard a saying: Quark is a company that everyone hates that makes a piece of software that everyone loves. Of course, this was in the days when PageMaker (AKA: SlaveMaker) was it's only real competition. Jump to present day. Adobe InDesign is a very nice piece of software that does everything I've ever used Quark for and so much more. Quark 6 is basically Quark 4 running on OS X, add in a few minor, non-useful features (Quark layers are and always have been a joke).
Everyone still hates Quark the company, because it treats it's customers like crap. Don't believe me...call them up and tell them you need to re-install on a new computer and see if they don't treat you like you are stealing. Adobe is an okay company. I can't think of anything good to say about them, but nothing much bad comes to mind either. Quark...crappy company with good software. Adobe...acceptable company with great software. Which would you prefer?
Company politics and arm-bending sales techniques will eventually fail, and when it does we'll see which software people prefer if they are allowed to choose.

[lhudd]

"I loved the part about Quark concentrating on making "good software" rather than marketing. Man, these guys have a great sense of humor. "
probably true... If I have to look at Kimberly the Designer one more time with her [censored]-eating smirk and dumb-ass blue flower in her hair, i might just kill sombody. What a crappy ad campaign... put an ugly chick with a "i'm better than your whole family" smirk on her face in a spread talking about a dental form she created with Quark. Great... I suppose she can create a form for a dermotologist next so she can get that mole removed. Or maybe she can... aww.. nevermind.

[macman_nz]

Qwak is dead, long live InDesign..
ID has done most of that for ages now, and Qwak is only just catching up? pfft.. and how much does it still cost? Nearly the price of the CS suite, isn't it..?? give it up.
Something Qwak will never get the hang of, without 3rd party plug-ins - native stuff!! Stick a PSD file in Qwak etc, ain't so hot now, huh? I stopped using that crap years ago and never been back.

[midlantica]

I'm not going to take it anymore... Now... Will Adobe please build the perfect converter of Quark 4, 5 and 6 and then we can all move on. And will Adobe please get it's act together and not botch up Dreamweaver and Fireworks. For crying out loud, get hip with symbols! I'll caveat that by saying I haven't seen much of the new Adobe CS 2 stuff, maybe they've finally got symbols. Adobe, we web people want a lightweight web-only app like Fireworks; don't try to make a ImageReady for Illustrator which will handle all the ex-Fireworks stuff. Just make Fireworks Adobe CS compatible.
Rant, I'm out.

[themacuser]

It appears as though the posts here are an accurate reflection of reality -- not tainted by ZD advertising dollars (and thats good). QuarkXPress has always invested more time & energy in developing protection for their sorry code than they have in making the user-experience better, more intuitive or helpful. They have consistantly made decisions to ensure that QuarkXPress is known for non-service, non-support and extremely unfriendly experiences. I was tickled tremendously when Adobe released the v.2 of InDesign and made it useful in a prepress environment and competitive in design environments... while Quark fell asleep at the OS X wheel, and then Quark publicly blamed Apple for not supplying them with source code quickly enough to create a product. PLEASE! Good riddance QXP -- you will not be missed and may others learn from your big-headed business model. Users make the rules for developers to follow, not the other way around. Now that Adobe has the Macromedia product line its all academic. Goodnight, Quark!

[SGP_MacUser]

Quark really fulfills publishing needs technically... but fails largely at customers' needs.
Quark's features are great and I love them. However, when it comes to handling customers, they are not at hand to make things easier. The policies are sometimes painful, very painful.
I hope a new CEO would lend a listening ear to its past customers, big and small, home and remote (CJK customers), etc. would be heard. Issues would be addressed.
I look forward to that happy Quark users and owners which wasn't.

[crc]

NEWSFLASH!
Quark annonces that they will release an Intel version of X-press for the Mac by 2010.

[simpl3x]

Somebody asked, I wonder what Quark can do to get on the Mac users good side? Perhaps it would start with, not telling us to switch to Windows!
Quark say that designing is fast in Quark! But InDesign is slower to use--Yes, unfortunately it is!--because of the many options available. I didn't have to wait 6 versions for layers. Transparency! I like that a lot. Export to PDF--PDF workflows... It's what all the pros are using Quark!--cleanly! Yes, we do know that product authorization is a necessity, but why my friend is it such a pain in the ass? And, you just couldn't throw in the laptop installation? I have about "this" much sympathy for Quark.
The newtwork effect is in progress. Everybody is in the process of switching... whether they know it or not. Just as with PageMaker, there will be plenty of people who take the files, but you will be looked down upon. "The pros use InDesign."
Good luck Quark! Thank goodness I won't need to do another installation!

[DocOrlando]

Ooooh! Creating Quark's own native markup language! Ooooh! Exporting content cross-application DOM schema garble PPML thingme XPathogenic blarg Turpin.
WE DON'T NEED A WYSWYG WEB EDITOR.
WE DON'T NEED RELATIONAL DATABASE FUNCTIONALITY VOODOO.
WE WANT A CLEAN LAYOUT PROGRAM.
THAT'S ALL WE'VE EVER WANTED.
Quark is bloatware. Kludgeware. Crammed with so much crap in order to serve so many niches that it ends up being impotent, a victim of its own obesity.
The company, and the app, needs an enema.

[skbrn16]

OH man, I agree with you 100%! That ad campaign is terrible. Annoying smirk, body copy that (seems) to imply that it's great to spend $1000 on software to design a dental form. A model that apparently is supposed to appeal to the 19 to twenty-somethings with her psuedo-hip appearance...it just doesn't say anything good about the product at all. Stupid, just stupid.

[Bilbo63]

Who would want Glen Turpins's job? I have to hand it to him, he's trying. He should look for a new job because try as he might, he is fighting a losing battle.
Quark is circling the bowl.

[whitedog]

Quark hired a CEO not too long ago who was trying to make it a more customer friendly business. Last week they fired him. So much for improving customer relations.
Quark XPress and Adobe InDesign seem to be moving in different directions. The last few versions of Quark have focused on corporate users where a cooperative, integrated and flexible workflow is important. Version 7 apparently will continue that trend. Improvements to the UI have been non-existant - Quark 6.5 in OS X looks just like Quark 4 in OS 8x. And, apparently, to continue to encourage expensive third-party plug-in developers, they have skimped on feature improvements. For example, unless you buy a plug-in, you still have to set bleeds and slugs by hand. InDesign integrates those features into the document set-up process - where they belong.

In reply to:

---

The structure of the QuarkXPress project is defined according to W3C DOM and XPath specifications. DOM makes all the content of a QuarkXPress project available as XML, which allows any application that understands the schema of a QuarkXPress project to access the QuarkXPress data and process it.

---

Of course, they never mention what applications actually understand the QuarkXPress schema, which suggest to me such applications are few and far between. You'd think if there was anything to brag about they'd do a little name dropping.
Meanwhile, I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has stability problems with Xpress. Since upgrading to 6.5, Collect For Output invariably crashes the program. So I have to do it manually. With more than a few fonts and images this work-around is not feasible. Rather than spend countless hours troubleshooting the problem I have moved almost exclusively to InDesign.
Speaking of InDesign, it has, naturally enough, been moving toward seamless integration with other Adobe applications. CS 2 continues this trend in a big way. Personally, this is far more valuable than an XML workflow. Anyone who uses a page layout program to build web pages, or a database, needs their head examined, anyway. Of course, now that Adobe has acquired Macromedia, the possibilities do multiply.
Still, these differences in focus for XPress and InDesign do begin to distinguish the programs. For certain environments no doubt XPress is a better choice. For others, it's InDesign. The areas of overlap are decreasing, which may be a good thing for both applications in the long run.
The funniest part of Mr. Turpin's remarks, for me, was where he criticizes Adobe's advertising techniques and then proceeds to say Quark will soon be imitating them. Though it may have nothing to do with the quality of the product, as far as advertising is concerned apparently what they are learning how to do is talk out of both sides of their mouth at the same time. While doing better BS may have a role in marketing a product, I don't see it adding value to the product itself. As others here have observed, most of what Turpin says is no more than wishful thinking. And none of it relates to what Mac users in particular really want from Quark.
Of course, Windows users are inured to a lousy UI so Quark fits right in. On the Mac, though, XPress continues to stand out like a sore thumb. Since Turpin said nothing about an improved user interface for Quark 7, they obviously still don't get it.
In respect to program activation, none of my friends who have upgraded to CS 2 have complained about it. I had my own nightmare experience with XPress 6, so it would seem that Adobe figured out how to protect their product from piracy without making their customers miserable. I won't hold my breath for Quark to do the same.

[djacopille]

While it seems that Quark has been getting a little better as a company lately I cannot forget the years of torture this company has dished out, and still dishes out in the form of XPress 6.5. I thought the new emphasis on "collaboration" was rather humorous. You still can't go cross platform from Quark on a PC to Quark on a Mac if you have graphics linked externally - Quark doesn't used a universal path format (stupid) and they don't allow relative links or allow embedding of graphics (like logos that don't change). The result - every time you "collaborate" cross platform you've got to repair all the graphics links. Will this be fixed in 7? It's Quark we're talking about! I'm hoping it will be fixed by v11 or 12 when the motto will be "collaboration - and this time we really mean it!".