Greatest Post On Quark vs. InDesign Ever

The below is anoth­er dis­cus­sion begun about Quark in the Graphic Design Resource Group. It was in response to some­one express­ing sur­prise at the over­whelm­ing vehe­mence of Quark-using respon­dants on my Quark vs. InDesign site. In response to the below I received “My God, Pariah, that was the GREATEST post on Quark vs. InDesign EVER. EXACTLY RIGHT.” While I don’t know about that, I thought I’d reprint it here for the heck of it. The tongue-in-cheek title is because I could­n’t come up with any other.

I’ve been using QuarkXpress since ’89, ver­sion 2. My dis­dain for Quark, Inc. and the appli­ca­tion QuarkXPress have noth­ing to do with my recent­ly for­mer employ­ment with, or feel­ings for, Adobe. It stems from the way I, as a QuarkXPress user and Quark, Inc. cus­tomer, have been treat­ed by Quark, Inc. for more than a decade.

If you read the com­ments on those posts on my site–or any­where around the web–you’ll see that my opin­ions are hard­ly unique among QuarkXpress users.

I’ve been a QuarkXpress pro­fes­sion­al (and train­er) for years. Because of the years I’ve used the prod­uct for work, pay­ing $400–$900 for new ver­sions only to find that there’s noth­ing new in them, that users’ requests and chang­ing needs have been ignored ever since QuarkXpress 3.3 (cir­ca ’93), I have a great frus­tra­tion with using the prod­uct. Everyone who uses QuarkXpress, whether she likes it or not, is frus­trat­ed by the pro­duc­t’s quirks, counter-intuitive user inter­face, and lack of sup­port for chang­ing tech­nolo­gies and the chang­ing design busi­ness. While every oth­er soft­ware pub­lish­er, includ­ing Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe, has learned from the last twen­ty years of user inter­face design, Quark, Inc. has flat­ly ignored it. QuarkXpress is a pain in the neck to use, and a real hur­dle to learn. I know; I teach peo­ple to use it.

Moreover, Quark, Inc. has refused to change with the needs of its users. Instead Quark, Inc. tries to dic­tate stag­na­tion in the cre­ative and press industries.

Have you ever dealt with Quark, Inc.‘s cus­tomer ser­vice or tech­ni­cal sup­port? They’re noto­ri­ous as the absolute worst in the com­put­er software/hardware indus­try. They’ve been that way for years, despite ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve.

Quark, Inc. even shut down its own user forums because they did­n’t want poten­tial cus­tomers, those on the fence about InDesign and QuarkXpress, read­ing all the unan­swered com­plaints and bug reports stuff­ing the forums.

Quark, Inc., steered by its CEO, Fred Ebrahimi, has been a very bad ven­dor to the cre­ative pro mar­ket. Quark, Inc. has been stag­nant for years because it did­n’t have any com­pe­ti­tion. Nothing improved, noth­ing changed (QuarkXpress 4.1, released in ’95, is vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to QuarkXpress 5, released in ’02, and 6, released in ’04) regard­less of unprece­dent­ed feed­back from QuarkXpress users. A decade ago Quark, Inc. turned up its nose at the cus­tomers, say­ing, “QuarkXpress is it, there is no com­pe­ti­tion. QuarkXpress is used the way it is, so why should we invest in chang­ing it?” If there had been any com­pe­ti­tion to QuarkXpress, users would have flocked to it in droves, leav­ing Quark, Inc. to fall on its face.

And that’s exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing now. Creatives are run­ning from Quark, Inc.‘s arro­gance and its dis­dain for its cus­tomers to the only viable com­pe­ti­tion available.

Yes, QuarkXpress has a large installed user base that has­n’t yet migrat­ed to InDesign. Don’t kid your­self. That fact isn’t because those users pre­fer QuarkXpress to InDesign or because they feel loy­al­ty to Quark, Inc.. It’s a sim­ple mat­ter of eco­nom­ics: Large shops and work­flows are built around QuarkXpress because, for more than ten years, QuarkXpress was the only game in town. Changing those work­flows means buy­ing new com­pli­men­ta­ry soft­ware and hard­ware and retrain­ing per­son­nel. That is an expen­sive propo­si­tion. It’s one even the most fru­gal pro­duc­tion man­ag­er knows she will have to even­tu­al­ly pay for, but in these tight eco­nom­ic times, many are try­ing to keep going as long as pos­si­ble with what they’ve got.

InDesign is a bet­ter pro­gram than Quark, Inc., hands down. More impor­tant­ly, it is a long over­due alter­na­tive to QuarkXpress. Finally there is a choice. Even the most rec­og­nized Quark, Inc. expert, David Blatner, pub­li­cal­ly stat­ed that InDesign is years beyond QuarkXpress. Could Quark, Inc. have improved and remained a seri­ous con­tender? Of course. But instead, Quark, Inc. chose to con­tin­ue in its arro­gance by telling the world cus­tomer ser­vice and lis­ten­ing to user feed­back did­n’t mat­ter, all that mat­tered was that the pro­gram worked the same way it had for years. It func­tioned in exact­ly the same way it did ten years ago, and no one should want any appli­ca­tion that does any­thing more (or bet­ter) than QuarkXpress.

Yes, com­pe­ti­tion inspires improve­ment and ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fits users. But, a com­pa­ny has to respond to that inspi­ra­tion and choose to com­pete for users to ben­e­fit. Quark, Inc. has cho­sen to ignore the com­pe­ti­tion and there­fore not improve. 

Would I like to see com­pe­ti­tion remain in the lay­out appli­ca­tion mar­ket? Yes, whole-heartedly. Quark, Inc. only got as good as it did because it began as an upstart com­peti­tor to PageMaker. But I also believe in reap­ing what you sow. Quark, Inc. has stepped on its users and ignored them for so long because users had no oth­er choice but QuarkXpress, that Quark, Inc. has become a real bad guy in the indus­try. I want to see Quark, Inc. final­ly real­ize the con­se­quences of its actions, just like every­one else. It would be good for the mar­ket if Quark, Inc. did so, then learned from its mis­takes and man­aged to stay alive to build a bet­ter application.

Quark, Inc.‘s his­to­ry of arro­gance and its delay in rec­og­niz­ing the threat of InDesign, how­ev­er, make it unlike­ly that Quark, Inc. can actu­al­ly wake up and act in time to save itself. This is much like Adobe and the web: Adobe was late devel­op­ing web-design applications–particularly with regard to vec­tor graph­ics and ani­ma­tion for the web. Consequently, Adobe’s LiveMotion appli­ca­tion and (co-authored) SVG tech­nol­o­gy were too lit­tle too late (I’m still hold­ing out for SVG, though). They did­n’t stand a chance against Flash because every­one wait­ed too long, giv­ing Macromedia too great a lead in that mar­ket. If Quark, Inc. does­n’t react pro­found­ly very, very soon, it’s going to go the way of LiveMotion.

I don’t advo­cate the demise of Quark, Inc., I pre­dict it. There’s a major dif­fer­ence there.

Do we real­ly want Adobe being the sole pro­duc­er of the main graph­ics pro­grams we use (i.e. Photoshop, Illustator, InDesign)? 

Adobe lis­tens to its cus­tomers. Even with Photoshop, a prod­uct that has more than 90% mar­ket share and no seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion, Adobe con­stant­ly improves the prod­uct. Photoshop is king of the hill, and Adobe could become com­pla­cent about that like Quark, Inc. did. Adobe, how­ev­er, is smart enough to know that com­pla­cen­cy just invites some­one to come along and knock the king off the hill.

But this dis­cus­sion isn’t about Adobe; it’s about Quark, Inc. Adobe won’t kill Quark, Inc.; Quark, Inc. is the archi­tect of its own down­fall and, unless a rad­i­cal change of direc­tion hap­pens soon, its own demise.

Quark, Inc.‘s new CEO, Kamar Aulakh, who took over from Ebrahimi 10 February, 2004, has his work cut out for him. Does Aulakh have the time and suf­fi­cient remain­ing con­sumer good­will to spack­le all the gush­ing holes in Quark, Inc.‘s dam? I don’t know. Ebrahimi did a lot of dam­age to that dam, and he’s still around as Chairman of the Board. What’s more, Aulakh isn’t new to Quark, Inc. He’s been President to Ebrahimi’s CEO for eight years; Aulakh has been there, help­ing Ebrahimi to lead, through all the bad deci­sions, all the snub­bing, all the arro­gance. Only time will tell if Aulakh’s pro­mo­tion will in any way alter Quark, Inc.‘s spi­ralling fall toward obscurity. 

Incidentally, Freehand held an almost even mar­ket share with Illustrator until Macromedia changed its direc­tion and aban­doned the print world all togeth­er in favor of spe­cial­iz­ing in online design and pro­duc­tion. As peo­ple see Freehand’s devel­op­ment slip­ping, they’re defect­ing. That is attrib­ut­able much more to Macromedia than to Adobe. Just as Adobe’s own delay killed LiveMotion. Just as Quark, Inc. dug its own grave; Adobe did­n’t dig it for Quark, Inc..