Reprieve for Booting New Macs With Mac OS?

MatthewRothenberg writes "Apple has announced that as of January, new Macs will boot with Mac OS X only, but now MacInTouch reports that there might be a reprieve in the works for booting with Mac OS. According to one reader, a Quark representative has been calling pro publishers to ease their worries about the lack of a Mac OS X-native version of its QuarkXPress DTP program; after talking it over with Quark, Apple has agreed to move back the Mac OS X-only deadline until June." I can imagine that conversation with Jobs: "Why don't you just finish porting your freaking product already?"

Comments

Re:Well Sometimes Portings isnt so easy and quick.

[MatthewRothenberg]

>>It is my guess the code it well hacked up and they are running into a lot of stumbling blocks in order to get it to work.

We ran a story about that on eWEEK a couple months back ... From what Quark's been saying at Seybold San Francisco and other gatherings, XPress 6.0 will represent a whole new code base, not just an upgrade optimized for Mac OS X's Carbon APIs.

Re:What good should that delay be?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I can hardly imagine that everybody is only waiting for Quark so they can switch to X.

That's exactly what's happening in a lot of print and design shops, though. They're buying brand-new dual-processor G4s and running OS 9 on them full-time just for Quark. Every other program they'd need runs under OS X-- even though a few of them only run in Classic-- but they have to stay on OS 9 for Quark.

And it's not even that Quark is that great. InDesign has it beat in almost every category. But there are millions of Quark files out there that people still need to use. Dropping Quark completely just isn't a practical option.

What about existing workflows and applications for scanning, printing, ripping etc. that either don't exist on X or cost a fortune to update

Virtually everything you'd need to run a print shop has been ported to OS X. Practically everybody's using a PDF workflow these days, and OS X has better PDF support than any other OS. As for ripping and printing, all of that is being done with Windows. The Windows RIP just sits there in the corner, humming to itself, and chews through PDF all day and night. The interactive tools, though, are all on OS X except for Quark.

Re:What good should that delay be?

[frankie]

hardly imagine that everybody is only waiting for Quark so they can switch to X.

Exactly 100% of the Mac-based publishing pros that I know personally (1 local tabloid and 2 unrelated freelancers) are indeed sticking with OS9 solely because of Quark. They really want to come over to crash-free OSX, but QXP is their livelihood.

I've suggested InDesign, but they don't want to risk problems with converting their old files.