[Nobody]

Ahh, that's the Quark hate-fest I've come to know and love after any Quark update or release.
I'm personally glad for any competition in this kind of software, because as you may have noticed, we're running out of choices.
I come to this release as skeptical, but willing to try the finished shipping product. I was somewhat skeptical of 6-6.5, but there were some features in that release that I found very convenient.
However, since I work as prepress, whether I love Q7 or not my customers will decide what I work with.

[Nobody]

I read the hardware you were using for the PPC tests, it looks pretty ancient. Was there a specific reason for that?

[Grapho]

Anybody that calls you an idiot for expressing your personal preference is an idiot him self. I have a lot of customers that have both Xpress and InDesign. They use Xpress a lot more than InDesign because that is what they are familiar with. I personally like InDesign and it's integration with the rest of the CS2 suite, but I also know Xpress and use it on daly bases. I am just not to excited about what the review had to say. Slow with difficult features to implement just doesn't seem to live up to all the hype coming form Quarks marketing team.

[GMGruman]

The age of the test platform is irrelevant, since all three products were tested on the same system, so you get an accurate proportional measurement of relative speed. Maybe on a new PPC the times (for ALL apps) would have been cut in half, but the ratios would still be the same, with Q7 being about 1/3 to 1/2 the speed of Q6.5 in most tests.
But to answer your specific question: My PPC hardware is "ancient" because I don't want to invest in a new production system until the Intel conversion is completed. The vast majority of my apps are PPC-native and would be too slow on Intel (it was interesting that my "ancient" PPC system runs as fast as the brand-new Mac mini, for example). So it's both the Apple hardware transition and the software transition that I need to account for. (The Intel transition has been discussed for a couple years now, don't forget, and before that the improvements from one new Mac to the next were not that compelling -- that's why Apple finally dumped the PPC.) I undertand why Apple is focusing on the lower-end systems first in the Intel shift -- that makes perfect business sense -- but it's also caused most production shops to be conservative in upgrading their production systems until the platform has stabilized. (We all know there will be a faster system, but that's OK. But platform issues stay with your for years.)

[Grapho]

In reply to:

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Quark attributes the slowdown to a new graphics engine.

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This statement seems to be in stark contrast to

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I can tell you its running fast as hell, Quark senior vice president Jurgen Kurz told Macworld at the unveiling of the new version of QuarkXPress Tuesday.

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What ever changes Quark made to it's management, to blatantly state how fast it is, when in reality is slower then what they offered before hand strikes me as deceiving. I thought they where trying to portray an image of "Good Customer Service" company. I can understand that they need to hype the release to generate interest, but maybe they should just kept quiet about the speed and not come out with a statement like "fast as hell". This will only work against them.

[Grapho]

Maybe it will be "Fast as Hell" when Hell freezes over. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Peter Cohen]

I think some of you are getting quite ahead of yourselves. Jrgen Kurz's comment was made specificially within the context of the Universal Binary version of QuarkXPress running on an Intel-based Mac. Until that version is reviewed, it's premature and quite irresponsible to criticize him for saying that. But even then, "Fast as hell" is a subjective term -- your mileage, as in all things, may vary. So please, give it a rest.

[Nobody]

Galen,
I'm with you on the hesitation to upgrade hardware until the Intel transition has reached the 'professional' systems. Please don't take offense to the 'ancient'comment, I'm not knocking anyone's hardware, as at work I'm on a 4 year old PPC 1.25GHZ machine myself.
I understand what you mean by the age of the platform, but I didn't know if you had some great insight into what people may typically try to run Q7 on, therefore you chose an older system.
I too find it amusing that the PPC system runs as fast as a brand new Mac Mini... I'm glad I popped for one of the G5 iMacs (for my own computer) before they went away.

[Grapho]

Ahead of my self, maybe, since I don't have an Intel base Mac nor a copy of Xpress UB, but judging from what the reviewer stated here...

In reply to:

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I wouldn't make any assumptions about the Universal Binary's promised speed. XPress 7 is slow running natively on PowerPC, which doesn't make sense if the goal was to improve the speed of the underlying application. I would have thought that maybe Quark designed the app for Intel and ported it to PowerPC, not worrying about speed, but since the Intel-native version is still in beta, that doesn't sem to be the case. Anyhow, promises are easy to make, and all vendors like to promote their products. Remember that Quark has a recent history of making promises it can't keep and then shipping several updates and plug-ins later to fill in the gaps -- version 6 was perhaps the most obnoxious example of this. Let's wait until the Intel-native version ships before accepting this latest claim.

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I tend to agree with his assessment. Now who is to know that by the time they ship the new UB version the application will be further optimized for both Intel and Power PC.

[longtimedesigner]

If I am not mistaken, prior to the release of either xPress 5 or 6, Kurtz was on record stating that they were going to release a "bug-free" piece of software, and that's why the development was taking so long. People on various forums were jumping all over that statement after the bug-ridden software was released. Then, of course, there was that entertaining postcard campaign fiasco, where they claimed they developed new features that no other software had, but that InDesign already had.
Quark is simply a company that I do not trust. Maybe they hired some nicer people and upper management backed off somewhat. Still, I haven't seen them be 100% up-front with their user base at ANY time in their past or recent history.

[GMGruman]

No offense taken! I was all set to go to a G5 system when the Intel thing came up, so this is a longer period between upgrades than I normally do. Most production and design folks I know use G4 or G5 tower Macs to run their tools; mine is on the older side of that. We're all waiting for Intel towers, hopefully by winter.

[Grapho]

Yep, I am on the same situation.

[mahenry]

In reply to:

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Jrgen Kurz's comment was made specificially within the context of the Universal Binary version of QuarkXPress running on an Intel-based Mac. Until that version is reviewed, it's premature and quite irresponsible to criticize him for saying that.

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I'll definitely agree with that. The headline on maccentral.com is also fairly misleading as it says:

In reply to:

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The latest versionreleased Tuesdayis compatible only with PowerPC Macs, with the Universal version slated for release this summer.

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Compatible only with power PCs? I think that's a touch misleading unless quark simply does not function on intel macs.

[macsolu]

So, did Quark do a smart move and allow for the ability to save files that can be opened by several previous versions, like v6, v5, v4, and even v3? Or, will users be S.O.L. like they pretty much were with QXP6? This was such a huge issue that a third-party company (MarkzWare) jumped in to provide a XTension for all the users who, for various reasons, needed this feature.