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Apple Bundles InDesign With Power Macs
analog_line writes "Apple is firing a shot across the bow of Quark with a new promotion bundling Adobe InDesign 2.0 with every new PowerMac G4 (that is, the towers). News.com has a story on this as well. I say go Apple. Hopefully this will either get Quark to release their Mac OS X version of XPress or start the process of killing them off once and for all." I really liked QuarkXPress a lot when I used it extensively back in the version 3 days. It'd be a shame if it they lose out on Apple's new platform. But as a capitalist, I say, let the best product win!
But as a capitalist, I say, let the best product win!
But if Apple bundles the product wouldn't that give a distinct advantage to Adobe without regards to whether they have a better product? This to me is just Apple's way of slapping Quark's wrist and rewarding Adobe, who aside from Microsoft is Apple's biggest software producer.
shouldn't it be: as a capitalist, I say, let the product with the best advertising win.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I love competition. Look at graphics cards: ATI has just overtaken nVidia, who overtook 3dfx, who overtook Matrox, who overtook ATI ... The big winner is the citizen with her wallet, getting an order of magnitude performance increase, for similar cost, every couple years.
I started doing desktop publishing with PageMaker 4, which was right before Quark started to really kick their butts in PC-land. Adobe bought PageMaker from Aldus, who'd invested a lot of effort in working with designers and creating a great product. Adobe got complacent and sat on their ass, with the result that Quark crossed platforms and ate their lunch. Now they're coming back with InDesign, which has some great features and usability enhancements that Quark can't touch (OS X support aside).
Another thing helping Adobe is their frankly brilliant positioning of PDF. The network effect of PDF is huge - many print shops are taking files in PDF for complex jobs, and our local paper (The Oregonian - not high class, but not little) asks for ads in PDF. PS is still the standard, but PDF is a nice intermediary. Adobe's turning it into the XML of page layout and design.
Random thought: Artistic and design tools is the one of the hardest areas for OSS to compete, because these programs (like Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut, etc.) are all about interface and polish. I'm not saying that OSS can't do this, just that it takes a strong vision and committed management to pull off this type of software.
Anyone want to lay odds on Adobe porting it's suite to Linux? OS X support could pull that argument in either direction.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
I've been a Quark loyalist for years, and almost took a job with them last year. I'm so glad I didn't, because since then: 1) They've moved most of their programming to India. 2) They've fired some of their sales reps around Chicagoland. 3) One of their big guns as far as keeping corporate customers happy has left Quark and started a company that consults businesses migrate from QuarkXPress to InDesign. I'm losing faith in Quark by the minute. Version 5 was a complete waste of time. Luckily, 50 percent of my job consists of simply trying to keep QuarkXPress running on 60 machines without crashing. Another 30 percent is spent restoring jobs from backup that got corrupted when QuarkXPress crashed, and the last 20 percent is figuring out how our in-house asset management system can be modified to work with InDesign instead of QuarkXPress...
Oh, let the death be slow, messy and painful. Let it drag on at least as many months as that dog cost me in lost productivity due to crashes, conversions, etc. The more you learn about the software the more friggin screwed up it seems. Bad design, bad implementation, bad interfaces, bad support, bad roadmap. Bad, bad, bad.
illegitimii non ingravare
But if Apple bundles the product wouldn't that give a distinct advantage to Adobe
This isn't "bundling" in the sense that Apple does with iTunes or M$ does with IE. It's a temporary sales promotion. You need to send in a coupon in the mail and wait two months for the free copy to be sent to you; this isn't something you can exploit to make a deadline or market window.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
Socialism would be far better than what we have right now.
Haven't you ever heard the expression, "The grass is always greener on the other side?" Anything would seem to be far better than what we have right now. It rarely turns out that way, of course.
The Mac is really a niche market - graphic design. If there are no apps to support the designer, Apple goes kaput.
Most (meaning over 90%) publishing houses use Macs and Quark, exclusively, keeping InDesign around just for experimentation and compatability. If someone sumbits a job in Page Maker, they will get the job returned. Apple knows this, and since Quark really has made little public indication of an X-native XPress in the future (let alone before January 2003 -- when all new Macs will only boot in to X), Apple's main consumer base is at risk. As for right now, migrating all users to InDesign (which can read XPress documents, sort-of) is the best solution for Apple. At least until Apple decides to make that market its own and release iPublish or some other such rubbish.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
Ironically, it was Apple that pushed QuarkXpress in the first place. When Aldus decided to port PageMaker to the PC, Apple got annoyed at them, and because the then-new QuarkXpress was Mac-only, they threw their considerable marketing weight behind it.
Perhaps if Quark had been a cross-platform developer, they might have been more nimble about porting to OS X.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
quark xpress is available for both windows and mac.
I don't see how this will help companies adopt os x. these companies use quark because it is what they are used to. they are just going to switch because apple bundles it with the machine? i imagine until there is an os x version of quark, companies will simply ignore os x. and then perhaps even after it is available they will still ignore it, since alot of what the print world uses are applescripts that just won't work in os x because features are different/missing.
Much better. It's cheaper, but it doesn't wok right out of the box. I have to put it together, it's un polished, doesn't do everything it should do, and has a much slower development time than the commercial version. Much much better.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Simple, it's the best product. What's so hard to understand about that?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I always find it funny to hear someone (usualy radical feminists) declare that the usage of he or she to describe an object is sexist. Espesialy when you consider that most words which are refered to as she/her are usualy items which are to command the upmost respect (i.e. the flag, the nation, a boat, a very nice car, a beautiful sculpture etc etc etc). How is asociating the female gender with respect and reverence sexist?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
InDesigns's market share is tiny, and no one's really adopting it.
Been to a newspaper or magazine lately? Since the release of version 2.0, InDesign has come to own that market. For good reason, IMHO.
In addition, the first thing any serious design, production or prepress firm does upon recieving a new machine is nuke the drive and install their own build.
You, like pretty much everybody else here, seem to be under the mistaken impression that InDesign is going to be pre-installed on new Macs, like iTunes. That's not right at all. If you buy a G4 between now and the end of the year, you can mail Adobe a coupon and they'll send you a copy of InDesign for free. If you don't want it, don't send in the coupon. On the other hand, if you like getting expensive things for free....
Accept something for free if it is clear that the giver has no commercial interest in giving it to you or if the relationship is such that the giver can't exercise control over you or the product later on. Otherwise, be very suspicious and try to avoid the "gift" if you can.