Quark: Mac OS X Not Ready

blankmange writes "NewsFactor reports that Quark's QuarkXPress is not quite up-to-snuff under Mac OS X." Sources in the article claim Mac OS X still isn't quite there in regard to printing, or predictability. That is, I suppose, you don't mind crashes as long as you know when they are going to happen and what is going to cause them.

Comments

Where's the Quark Clone?

[mshiltonj]

There's Gimp, Sketch, Killustator (I forget what it's called now; I use Gnome). But where is the Quark clone?!

Just another reason

[techsoldaten]

Just another reason to switch to InDesign...

Quark is too complacent

[Spencerian]

Quark has milked its dominance in DTP for too long. Adobe tends to get its products polished by version 3, and its InDesign 2 product has received very positive reviews over QXP 5. The fact that QXP isn't supported natively in OS X is a nail in Quark's complacency coffin.

I'm not a big fan of QXP due to its history of annoying and serious bugs that caused all manner of stability and reliability problems. I do wish them success, but unfortunately they either have a lot of legacy issues or they really think that other companies won't be a problem while they take their sweet time to port. OS X's printing isn't perfect, but the fundamental PS support is there and works well enough, so that's a poor excuse.

Ask Lotus (1-2-3) about the consequences of complacency in the marketplace. Microsoft laughs all the way to the bank.

Re:Quark is too complacent

[cpeterso]

When was the last release of Quark? They seem to wait like 3-5 years between major releases, leaving their users frustrated with stale, buggy software. I think this is why people are so eager to adopt something new like Adobe's InDesign.

Re:Quark is too complacent

[Peter Trepan]

If only they were so eager! Even with outrageous pricing, bad tech support, late upgrades, and buggy software, Quark is still preferred by a landslide majority of service bureaus, and is the only thing they teach in graphic design school.

The last major release of Quark (5) was actually quite recent. It is not OS X compatible, but it does attempt to include web authoring capabilities, putting it into direct competition with Dreamweaver - a program that is more popular with web designers, easier to learn, more powerful, several hundred dollars cheaper, classic-mode compatible with OS X, and on the fast track to native support.

While Quark was working on their latest little gem, Apple ripped down their entire operating system architecture and started from scratch to build an operating system built on a different kernel, but able to work with with the same kind of interface, worked the bugs out to the point that it is now more stable than its predecessor, and able to run a native version of something as complex as Photoshop. And Quark accuses Apple of being inadequate. I know who I'd rather believe.

I wonder if Quark is really so clueless, or if their PHBs have settled into a de-facto retirement, and are just using their momentum to ride the gravy train until they run out of track.

Sounds to me like...

[ivan256]

Sounds to me like they're making excuses while everybody else seems to be having no trouble making their products work under MacOS X.

Re:Sounds to me like...

[jilles]

It mostly depends on how large the market for a product is. Adobe for example has ported photoshop but hasn't and most likely will never port framemaker. Framemaker has so much legacy code in it, it is almost impossible to fundamentally change it. The recently announced 7.0 version for instance still has no multi level undo even though this is one of the most often requested features. Implementing multilevel undo would require changes to large parts of the code and is therefore not feasible. I suspect that Quark express has a similarly sized group of professional users and a similar amount of legacy code. Porting probably would cost more than it would ever pay back.

Re:Sounds to me like...

[daviddennis]

I don't have any inside knowledge here, but FrameMaker runs on MacOS 9, Windows and a passel of Unices. THere was even a port to Linux for a while, but I think it didn't sell.

I don't see why a port of FrameMaker would be any more difficult than, say, Photoshop (also with plenty of legacy code).

I seem to remember they're trying to expand use of FrameMaker, and I doubt they'd be able to do that without a MacOS X port in the pipeline. If it were a dying product, I'd say it would never get ported, but apparently it isn't.

I'd love to give it a try, but sadly it's just too expensive for casual use.

D

Re:Sounds to me like...

[jilles]

There's a difference between maing it run and making it blend in. Framemaker just runs.

Re:Sounds to me like...

[jilles]

No, because making it a proper behaving aqua app requires fundamental changes to the app they won't port it. The best we may expect in the future is that they make it compile on OS-X like they can make it compile on other operating systems. Beyond that more changes are unlikely.

Re:Sounds to me like...

[analog_line]

In the publishing world, there's Quark, and then there's a bunch of bit players. They're the 800 pound gorilla. PageMaker used to be good competition, but after Adobe ate up Aldus, it just nosedived.

And while I will agree that there are issues with high-end printing solutions (pretty much every week I head complaints about how this or that super expensive printer doesn't have OS X drivers) Quark is basically a thug. Their not releasing a Carbonized version of Quark along with their very public comments (in this article and many others...I sometimes wonder if they have a PR guy out there full time spreading the word that they're not supporting OS X) are a direct, intentionally public slap in the face for Apple. They want things done their way, and they're doing their best to exert every bit of control they can over Apple, because Quark is a very important application for Apple. There are many people who wouldn't be using a Mac save for Quark.

I've never liked Quark. They've been thugs as long as I've been forced to deal with them. Unfortunately I'm going to have to suck it up and deal with their thuggery, because suggesting InDesign to my clients would at best garner me a laugh, at worst they'd call someone else when they're having problems.

Does this mean they need to add more bugs

[MarkusQ]

NewsFactor reports that Quark's QuarkXPress is not quite up-to-snuff under Mac OS X." Sources in the article claim Mac OS X still isn't quite there in regard to printing, or predictability. That is, I suppose, you don't mind crashes as long as you know when they are going to happen and what is going to cause them.

I'm having trouble parsing that last sentence. The only interpretation I can think of that (roughly) fits with the grammer and my understanding of the world is that Quark users will be disapointed under Mac OS X, since they are used to having their systems crash and knowing that Quark caused it, and now when their system crashes they won't know for sure if Quark caused it.

If that's the case, I can fix the problem easily. Just print out this post and patse the following line somewhere where you can refer to it often:

Trust me, it was Quark.

You're welcome.

-- MarkusQ

Re:Does this mean they need to add more bugs

[daviddennis]

I think the point is that crashes in MacOS 9 are more predictable and (thus) controllable than MacOS X. For instance, if you're using an application, and it's almost out of memory, you should save your work straight away and quit. If you do that every time an app is close to the end of its memory band, you won't get many crashes at all.

I'm sure there are plenty of printing operations that are simply too cheap to buy the expensive newer Macs capable of running MacOS X. I wouldn't be surprised if Quark's real position is that MacOS X software simply isn't as lean and mean as Quark, and making Quark MacOS X compatible would sacrifice that image.

I have never used Quark, seeing that I just about never print anyway, but that's my suspicion based on what I've read.

You sound like someone who's used Quark too much. What do you think of InDesign? The reviews make me think it's a lot nicer to work with. Maybe your press house should consider supporting it.

D

Re:Does this mean they need to add more bugs

[MarkusQ]

You sound like someone who's used Quark too much.

Yes, and far, far too late into the night trying to make a deadline on caffine and grim determination.

What do you think of InDesign? The reviews make me think it's a lot nicer to work with.

I haven't tried it, but you may well be right.

Maybe your press house should consider supporting it.

I was further upstream (downstream?) than that; I was stuck using Quark because that's what our printer accepted.

-- MarkusQ

Re:Does this mean they need to add more bugs

[daviddennis]

Try hiring a more flexible printer!

Apparently there has been an influx of InDesign users, but still not enough to make much of an impact. But the more there are, the more likely Quark is to face the cold winds of real competition.

D

Yup, sounds like Quark. Remeber floppies?

[realgone]

They've got a history of being slow with this sort of thing. Anyone else remember the exquisite agonies of their software installation system?

Not too long ago, you needed both a floppy drive and a CD to install XPress 3.31(?) on your box. The CD contained all the app data, the floppy held the serialization info. (And there was yet another floppy for registration. You'd mail that disk directly to Quark after you were done.) Annoying, but you could live with it. But when Apple decided to go no-floppy across their entire product line -- ouch! Suddenly no one could install Quark on those beyoootiful new G3s for which they'd shelled out so much money. (Or at least not without buying some USB external floppy drives, which were hard-to-find early on.) And for months afterwards, Quark did next to nothing about this very obvious problem.

IIRC, they eventually settled it so you could send them a proof-of-purchase, your original program disks and a vial of blood harvested from a virgin under the full moon's light and get a CD-only version of the installer. But back at the time, it was a HUGE issue for a lot of bureaus and design shops.

Re:Yup, sounds like Quark. Remeber floppies?

[linuxbert]

there still like this, the hoops you jump through to exchange an adb dongle for a usb one, almost 4 years after the imac did away with ADB. Qurak has yet to catch on, that macs dont come with ADB Anymore

Quark die

[Ioncable]

Quark has always been the bain of designers and Prepress. The only reason Designers use it is because prepress house asked them to. The only reason prepress uses it is because years back it was the only app that could output color sep film right from the app and a few other things and Pagemaker sucked for prepress. Quark has always raped its customers with costly tech support, expensive upgrades and really bad bug fixes that caused more problems then they fixed. If fact the company I work at just 12 months ago officaily switched to Xpress 4 because of all the problems. I hope InDesign gets a following. I've looked at Xpress 5 but it's more of a 4.3 release in my opinion. Quark was in the right place at the right time and nothing else. Aldus dropped the ball with Pagemaker and fell on hard times when it had the opportunity to kill Quark. Any problems Quark has with Mac OS X is all Quark and bad programming on their part. The only app I have that crashes my OS 9 mac. The only reason I would want it on OS X is so I don't have to reboot all the time.

Re:Quark die

[cosmo7]

I think bane is a little strong. XPress owns what used to be called DTP ( ie: back when non-desktop publishing existed) because it offered a level of precision missing from its then competitor PageMaker.

The success of the package is pretty much accidental. It was originally written as a word processor for the (hopelessly unsuccessful) Apple ///.

XPress on Mac is now the status quo in print production; freelancers, art directors, designers - pretty much anyone who is serious - uses it and the QPS workflow software. XPress also has a mature plug-in market which is another barrier to competitors.

On the other hand, Quark's screw-up in moving to OSX is the best opportunity for a competitor since the mid-nineties when XPress seemed stuck at version 3.1

Re:Quark die

[Ioncable]

Xpress is the status quo, but that doesn't make it good. It's an ok app, I have used it everyday for about 8 years. My point is that the apps success was accidental and the company is horrible. The app itself really hasn't grown at all since version 3.3. It became the status quo for 1 reason: When Xpress and Pagemaker started the market share battle. Xpress had DCS EPS files and could output color separated film right from the app and had rudamentary trapping. Pagemaker required Preprint or Trapwise to separate a file. There were a few other things Xpress did, but the real one was the Output. Prepress and Printing Companies loved it and "forced" it on to the designers. Most early designers prefered Pagemaker, it was the Prepress people that got them to switch to Xpress. If Adobe can offer Indesign with the features that Xpress requies Xtension for they could start to capture market, because the Xtension have to be rewritten for 5 and OS X.

Re: GEGL and GIMP 2.0 will address this, in part

[ubiquitin]

The next generation GIMP is being built on the GEGL library which will handle multiple color spaces (think CMYK needed for pre-press output.) What we need is a serious line art/page layout app that does CMYK.

Quark is a dinosaur

[theolein]

If there is any company that is worse in terms of upgrades, stability problems, costs and user support than Quark (including, believe it or not Microsoft) I'ld like to hear it. The other posters here are dead on: The company has raped and abused it's monopoly in Prepress for years and doesn't care the slightest about customer opinion. However, Prepress houses and Printers have not helped at all because if there was ever a conservative, stuck_in_the_mud group of software users it's those people in Prepress. On the one hand they work in an industry that is already entrenched and has a set work flow and extremely tight deadlines to meet (worked there myself) and is thus unwilling to take the risks of trying out new processes that could entail stoppages in the process. On the other hand, this (and I've witnessed this myself) is a group that gets upset because InDesign has different keyboard shortcuts to XPress and then decides that InDesign is "too different" and switches back to XPress.

On top of this most editorial bureaus are stuck with that Pig of a software editorial system: CopyDesk, even though it is typical Quark slow, crashware. Adobe has an answer solution and hopefully this will stimulate the market somewhat.

I have my own beef with Quark as regards the mFactory mTropolis Multimedia Tool that Quark bought up in an attempt to get into that market when their own useless POS, XPress_coupled Immedia didn't get anywhere. They provided no marketing, no support and no development of the tool which then consequently and unsurprisingly didn't expand it's user base. The brilliance of mTropolis can not be overstated in that, even now, 5 years after Quark killed it, there is an *expanding* user group on yahoo groups.

After Quark killed the tool, the user base tried various methods to get the source or at least a development licence from Quark to no avail. Apart from the one million dollar price tag that Quark put on the dead code (which the user group could obviously not afford) they stipulated that "all negative comments pertaining to Quark" must cease before they would think about it because there was such an outcry.

I do *not* wish that company well.

Everybody just chill!

[pr0t0]

If you don't work in the industry (apologies to those that do), try to understand...we don't use desktop equipment, we use ultra-high-end hardware solutions from Heidelberg, AGFA, ABDick, Kodak and the like that don't change at the rate of OS architecture. Most of us have highly involved workflows that work, and we aren't going to change for the sake of changing, it has to be better - not different. OSX, while I think it's awesome and can't wait to implement it here in our business, is no where near ready for my industry. You can get files to print to your Epson? Rock on! But there is no way it's going to interface with the Harlequin RIP software sitting on the NT box (don't bother, it wasn't my decision!) that is connected to the ABDick digital plate maker. And that output device prints 99% of the plates we put on the press.

As for the Quark vs. Adobe(PM, InD) argument, that could be changing. Adobe burned some bridges by stating there was not going to be future updates on Pagemaker and then shoveling that POS InDesign 1.0 to us. But InDesign 2.0 is very cool! I like it alot and I'm using it more. Quark Killer? I don't think so. But it might split my project load with Quark.

I use hammers to pound nails, and screwdrivers to turn screws. I'll use the software that works best for the job at hand...and none of them do everything perfectly, so save religion for church!
--
I'm sorry, but your opininion seems to be wrong.

I may very well switch, but not this year.

[SandSpider]

There's something to be said for not interrupting the production environment unnecessarily. If you have to put out a weekly or daily publication, then you really don't want anything that's going to cause a serious delay. You have to test everything to make sure it works, and you have to give your production people enough time to train and become proficient before you force them to switch over. Otherwise, you might not have a paper come the next week.

More and more Presses are accepting PDF files these days, so it's not as big of an issue if they don't carry InDesign. More troublesome is if you receive ads from clients that are in Quark, and you have to maintain both programs (and, consequently, both environments), just to be able to accept the ads.

Also, there's the consideration of the various plugins (or XTensions, if you are speaking specifically of Quark), as well as applescripts and the like. You lose whatever you had for customized workflow when you switch, so there has to be time to get everything working in a reasonably similar manner before you switch. If you have a database driven workflow, breaking that is seriously going to suck. On the other hand, chances are that Quark will only upgrade 5 to OS X, not 4, so it will break all of the plugins anyways.

Finally, there's the budget. In my case, I'm not going to be able to afford all of the upgrades until next year, chances are. I'm not in a big rush to go to OS X, but it's definitely in the plans. I want to stop the computer from crashing. If an app drops out here and there, no big deal, but if I can reduce the number of restarts per day to close to 0, then I will consider that a huge win. The question is, which will be the better program when it's time to switch? Even given my time frame, I bet it'll be InDesign.

=Brian

whatever

[j09824]

we use ultra-high-end hardware solutions from Heidelberg, AGFA, ABDick, Kodak and the like that don't change at the rate of OS architecture.

What's all that stuff good for? Almost all printed matter that I come across that is actually worth reading is black-and-white, has a simple layout, simple fonts, and simple typesetting. High-end typesetting seems like an obsession akin to high-end sports cars or expensive antiques. And for high-quality color images, I rather go on-line.

Re:whatever

[DavidRavenMoon]

What's all that stuff good for? Almost all printed matter that I come across that is actually worth reading is black-and-white, has a simple layout, simple fonts, and simple typesetting.

You never read magazines? Or even newspapers? How about that box of cookies? The package your latest computer game came in? Music CDs?

All that stuff was done using this type of gear, and probably done in Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, et al. Even that simple stuff.

Yeah, I work in the industry too...

Getting back to the Quark discussion, they have always had contempt for anyone but them selves. The CEO once said all their customers were crooks! I use the program everyday. I think it's a great program, BUT it's still riddled with bugs, and the fact that they didn't do an OS X version is just crazy. Anything they say is just an excuse to cover their ass. At home I run OS X 99% of the time, only booting into 9.2.2 to run Cubase VST. I use InDesign 2.0 now, and it's a great program. I don't miss Quark at all.

At work we are still using 9.1 and Quark ... but that will change at some point.

Re:whatever

[j09824]

You never read magazines? Or even newspapers? How about that box of cookies? The package your latest computer game came in? Music CDs?

No, generally, I don't. News is now conveniently available on-line, and all the other stuff is just packaging. Fancy packaging generally suggests a lack of good content to me, and publishers would be better off keeping things simple as far as I'm concerned.