Lampooning the QuarkXPress 7 Reviewer Guide

Don't review the hype. Quark VS InDesign.com staffers lampoon the hilarious QuarkXPress 7 Reviewer's Guide.

New soft­ware is often released to the press along with a review­er’s guide. Such guides high­light major fea­tures or changes and usu­al­ly pro­vide a project-based walk-through of using the soft­ware in a typ­i­cal (or ide­al­ized) workflow.

“We can­not risk offer­ing fea­tures that the major­i­ty of ser­vice providers and part­ners around the world can­not sup­port.” Translation: ‘We could­n’t make all the cool stuff work in this release, there­fore you don’t need them.’

Some review­er’s guides are sparse, decoration-free, black on white doc­u­ments that obvi­ous­ly nev­er came with­in a mile of a copy­writer (or graph­ic design­er). Others are beau­ti­ful­ly designed, pro­fes­sion­al­ly copy­writ­ten mas­ter­pieces of mar­ket­ing bril­liance. Most fall some­where between the two extremes. The QuarkXPress 7 review­er’s guide sets a new standard.

We tend to ignore the how-to sec­tions of review­ers’ guides. We’ve been pro­fes­sion­al design­ers and pre­press­men since the 80s, and we know how prod­ucts should per­form in cre­ative, pub­lish­ing, and pro­duc­tion work­flows. Most of the time we read through review­er’s guides, then cast them aside to test prod­ucts under real world con­di­tions, with real world projects. Usually, we only refer to review­er’s guides dur­ing the test­ing and review writ­ing process­es if we have a ques­tion or problem–this isn’t work­ing, is it a known bug?–that sort of thing. In the case of the QuarkXPress 7 review­er’s guide, how­ev­er, we just could­n’t put it down.

The attrac­tion was­n’t because the guide was well-designed (it was, very) or includ­ed a great tuto­r­i­al (it did­n’t). It was because the guide was hilar­i­ous. It was auda­cious, each word of it labo­ri­ous­ly craft­ed by a spin doc­tor whose art is on par with Michelangelo’s murals. It was more uproar­i­ous­ly engross­ing than a Dave Barry book.

Quark isn’t dead, dammit!

For days, it seemed every hour brought a new round of saucy com­ments from our staff. The sheer enter­tain­ment val­ue of the guide was so dis­tract­ing, in fact, that we found our­selves spend­ing more time writ­ing quips in the review­er guide PDF than test­ing and review­ing InDesign 2.0–whoops! I mean QuarkXPress 7–itself.

As excit­ed as we were to put XPress 7 through its paces, the guide was just plain more fun. And why should we keep all the mer­ri­ment to our­selves? Here, for your enjoy­ment, are some of the com­ments that found their way into copies of the QuarkXPress 7 review­er guide that cir­cu­lat­ed around the Quark VS InDesign​.com offices.

I won’t call this a review of the review­er’s guide–that would be absurd–so just think of it as cre­ative minds hav­ing a chuck­le. Let’s call it satir­i­cal opin­ions of a soft­ware review­er’s guide.

QuarkXPress 7 Reviewer Guide: “Quark was the first to produce…native Adobe Photoshop file support.”

Comments:

  • “Right… Quark was the first Denver-based desk­top pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny to pro­duce native Adobe Photoshop file support.”
  • “{cough}InDesign 1.0{cough}”
  • “The XPress 6.5 update brought native Adobe Photoshop sup­port in 2004. InDesign did­n’t get it until 1999. That’s lat­er, right?”
  • “Aw, some­body at Quark is dyslexic.”

Guide: “QuarkXPress leaped above better-promoted pro­grams such as…Adobe FrameMaker… Quark was… among the first to offer… Extensible Markup Language (XML) support.”

Comments:

  • “No, no you weren’t. FrameMaker has done XML for years–since long before Adobe bought it, as a mat­ter of fact. They even sold it as a com­plete XML solu­tion called FrameMaker+SGML.”
  • “If you’re going to fib to bol­ster your prod­uct, don’t fib in a doc­u­ment writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for journalists–people you know will vet your claims.”

Guide: “Our strat­e­gy at Quark is not to focus on the fea­ture sets of alter­na­tive prod­ucts but on the cur­rent needs of our installed base.”

Comments:

  • “These are not the droids you’re look­ing for.”
  • “Please, please, please don’t com­pare XPress 7 to InDesign!”
  • “Translation: ‘We’re doing what we can to keep our exist­ing cus­tomers using Quark, but there’s no need to wor­ry about (or build fea­tures for) the future of publishing.’ ”
  • “ ‘Current needs’–who cares about tomorrow?–‘of our installed base’–existing Quark cus­tomers should stay with XPress and new design­ers should choose InDesign.”
  • “Don’t wor­ry. Be happy.”

Guide: “[QuarkXPress is] the world’s most pop­u­lar pub­lish­ing tool…”

Comments:

  • “Windows is the most pop­u­lar oper­at­ing sys­tem, too.”
  • “Princeton University English Dictionary: ‘pop­u­lar: 1. Regarded with great favor, approval, or affec­tion espe­cial­ly by the gen­er­al pub­lic. 2. Comprehensible to the gen­er­al pub­lic. 3. Representing or appeal­ing to or adapt­ed for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple at large.’ What dic­tio­nary are they using?”

Guide: “QuarkXPress stim­u­lates cre­ative think­ing among our cus­tomers, who share many fea­ture requests with us.”

Comments:

  • “Many, many, many fea­ture requests–and the same ones for ten years.”
  • “ ‘Stimulates cre­ative think­ing…’ Make it stop! My side hurts!”
  • “Who else would cus­tomers share fea­ture requests with?”
  • “…many, many, many…”

Guide: “We can­not risk offer­ing fea­tures that the major­i­ty of ser­vice providers and part­ners around the world can­not support.”

Comments:

  • “Oh no you di’n’t! You di’n’t just say dat! Oh, snap!”
  • “Should we infer from this that XPress 7 should be com­pared head-to-head with InDesign 1.0?”
  • “Translation: ‘We could­n’t make all the cool stuff work in this release, there­fore you don’t need them.’ ”
  • “Um, last time I heard, the major­i­ty of ser­vice providers in North America, Japan, and oth­er major mar­kets were rec­om­mend­ing InDesign and its ‘risky’ features.”
  • “It’s a good thing they did­n’t have to back up the impli­ca­tion with recent facts.”
  • “Translation: ‘We could­n’t risk actu­al­ly try­ing to com­pete with InDesign on the mer­its of its features.’ ”

Guide: “At the same time, we need to exper­i­ment and be inno­v­a­tive, how­ev­er responsibly.”

Comments:

  • “We’re wild and cra-az-zy gu-uys!”
  • “OpenType is so exper­i­men­tal. And that trans­paren­cy fad? That’ll nev­er last.”
  • “ ‘We need to exper­i­ment and be innovative–Huh? Oh. We did­n’t invent OpenType? What do you mean InDesign did trans­par­ent Photoshop sup­port first? Well, we invent­ed the con­cept of PDFs that print, did­n’t we?’ ”
  • “Translation: ‘Our com­po­si­tion zones and color-level trans­paren­cy kick InDesign’s butt.’ ”

Guide: “The break­throughs that most cus­tomers are look­ing for don’t typ­i­cal­ly revolve around a spe­cif­ic new fea­ture; instead, they’re about the total impact that QuarkXPress can have on improv­ing accu­ra­cy, qual­i­ty, and productivity–and help them save mon­ey. The col­lec­tive val­ue of those improve­ments is how we earn our cus­tomer’s business.”

Comments:

  • “Don’t look for killer new features.”
  • “ ‘…and help them save mon­ey.’ QuarkXPress Passport, $1,329; InDesign, $699. Quark eco­nom­ics: QuarkXPress Passport saves money.”
  • “Aw, some­body at Quark is dyslexic.”
  • “These are not the droids you’re look­ing for.”
  • “In oth­er words, the lock­ing fea­ture now works.”

Guide: “If [a new fea­ture or change in XPress 7] hap­pens to be some­thing that looks ‘cool’ in a demo, that’s all the bet­ter. But to our cus­tomers, that’s a bonus, not a goal.”

Comments:

  • “XPress users don’t think they’re cool.”
  • “Neither does Quark.”
  • “Graphic design­ers don’t care about aesthetics.”
  • “Looks aren’t impor­tant to us–take our brand new, all orig­i­nal logo design and appli­ca­tion icons, for example.”

Guide: “The remain­ing page-layout pro­grams on the mar­ket now gener­i­cal­ly copy the metaphors, work spaces, tools, and terms that first appeared in QuarkXPress.”

Comments:

  • “Didn’t PageMaker pre­cede QuarkXPress?”
  • “Yeah, ’cause InDesign looks so much like XPress.”
  • “ ‘…terms that first appeared in QuarkXPress.’ Pretty lofty claim. Which terms from the 500-year-old print­ing pro­fes­sion did QuarkXPress actu­al­ly coin? Typeface? Font? Kerning? Margin?”
  • “You say runaround, I say text wrap; you say box, I say frame. Tomato, tomato.”
  • “If page-layout pro­grams copied tools, why do most do with a sin­gle tool what XPress does in no few­er than two or three?”
  • “Didn’t Quark pio­neer and patent the metaphors of Paper®, Text®, Rulers®, and, in 2003, Tabular Data™?”

Guide: “While cur­rent mar­ket com­pet­i­tive­ness may imply that the world is square­ly lin­ing up behind a sin­gle prod­uct, it’s not that simple.”

Comments:

  • “Translation: ‘Quark isn’t dead, dammit!”
  • “We still have India!”
  • “This is part of a full page worth of copy explain­ing why QuarkXPress and InDesign real­ly should­n’t be com­pared head to head and how many design­ers use both. That’s a lot of ink in direct oppo­si­tion to argu­ments and impli­ca­tions made else­where in the same doc­u­ment that XPress 7 is bet­ter than InDesign.”

Guide: “Because Quark has no agen­da to pro­tect the fea­tures of oth­er appli­ca­tions by lim­it­ing func­tion­al­i­ty with­in the page-layout process, we actu­al­ly have con­sid­er­ably bet­ter sup­port for native Adobe Photoshop (PSD) files than Adobe pro­vides with­in InDesign CS2.”

Comments:

  • “In yer face, Adobe!”
  • “Layer sets would be real­ly nice, but that’s a minor point com­pared to what XPress 7 does with PSDs. Yup, they’re nail­ing InDesign on PSDs.”
  • “Translation: ‘We’re a one appli­ca­tion com­pa­ny. (Please buy QuarkXPress or we’re screwed.)”

Guide: “[QuarkXPress 7 offers] the most com­plete tools on the mar­ket for group­ing, sav­ing, expand­ing, col­laps­ing, re-sizing, and (most of all) hid­ing palettes.”

Comments:

  • “Wha–? I–uh–wha–?”
  • “What mar­ket are they talk­ing about? Surely they can’t mean the soft­ware market.”
  • “Quark did­n’t real­ly write this, did they? Please tell me one of you guys added this.”
  • “Obviously the copy­writer has nev­er seen soft­ware from Adobe, Macromedia, or Corel.”

Guide: “Quark, Adobe, and oth­er ven­dors serv­ing the page-layout mar­ket­place actu­al­ly com­pete less with each oth­er than with exter­nal forces such as changes in economies, the move toward more auto­mat­ed pro­duc­tion, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of new media meth­ods, and oth­er cycli­cal and behav­ioral factors.”

Comments:

  • “Can’t we all just get along?”
  • “ ‘Changes in economies’ equals ‘some can afford XPress, some have to buy InDesign.’ ”
  • “Do they real­ly mean to bring eco­nom­ics into a com­par­i­son between XPress and InDesign? XPress is more expen­sive than InDesign in every mar­ket in the world, but in almost every oth­er coun­try, it’s also more expen­sive for the same prod­uct than in the U.S.”
  • “So, is XPress for Republicans?”
  • “ ‘Behavioral fac­tors,’ like those who switch to InDesign are ‘com­mit­ting suicide’?

Guide: “During its 19-year his­to­ry, QuarkXPress has enjoyed unprece­dent­ed cus­tomer loy­al­ty, even dur­ing dif­fi­cult peri­ods of growth, less-than-perfect sup­port, and intense price com­pe­ti­tion. …Quark has learned from its cus­tomers how to be a bet­ter part­ner. But at no time has Quark lost sight of the tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ty that goes along with pro­vid­ing the pub­lish­ing indus­try’s most impor­tant, mission-critical tool. Quark cus­tomers mea­sure val­ue using a com­plex for­mu­la that bal­ances reli­a­bil­i­ty, ease-of-use, bud­get­ing, train­ing, sup­port, employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion, ser­vice provider com­pat­i­bil­i­ty, and ulti­mate­ly the qual­i­ty of the final design. QuarkXPress 7 con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion of focus­ing on the same measures.”

Comments:

  • “Not since the Reagan admin­is­tra­tion have I seen so many words used to say nothing.”
  • “Sounds more like Clinton. There were no ‘sex­u­al rela­tions,’ just ‘inap­pro­pri­ate acts’.”
  • “Translations: ‘Unprecedented cus­tomer loy­al­ty’ equals ‘when PageMaker was the only oth­er game in town, cus­tomers were stuck with us’; ‘dif­fi­cult peri­ods of growth’ means ‘the 1990s when, as we held a tight-fisted vir­tu­al monop­oly on the pub­lish­ing indus­try, we held back on R&D dol­lars while the com­pa­ny purse grew’; ‘less-than-perfect sup­port’ equals ‘remem­ber when we let cus­tomers know much dis­dain we have for them?’; ‘intense price com­pe­ti­tion’ means–wait a minute. When did Quark ever try to com­pete on price?’ ” 
  • “ ‘Unprecedented cus­tomer loy­al­ty’? Surely they can’t mean to Quark?”
  • “And Quark claims it does­n’t have mar­ket­ing savvy. Nothing I’ve read from the com­pe­ti­tion has even half this much daz­zling mar­ket­ing speak B.S.”
  • “ ‘At no time has Quark lost sight of the tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ty that goes along with pro­vid­ing the pub­lish­ing indus­try’s most impor­tant, mission-critical tool.’ Yes, Quark, we’re keep­ing an eye on the way Adobe shoul­ders that respon­si­bil­i­ty, too.”

Now that we’ve all had a good laugh, hope­ful­ly Quark VS InDesign​.com can get back to work. Look for our in depth review of the QuarkXPress 7 beta next week.

Quark, QuarkXPress, QuarkXPress 7, InDesign, Adobe, Satire

30 thoughts on “Lampooning the QuarkXPress 7 Reviewer Guide”

  1. jerry

    it seems you are pathet­i­cal­ly defend­ing Quark. Obviously you are not that saavy in design and more into the bull­shit of tech­nol­o­gy. QUARK SUCKS and InDesign will kick their sor­ry ass its just a mat­ter of time. Quark has been faT AND HAPPY TOO LONG AND I LOOK FORWARD TO THE DAY WHEN THoSE ASSHOLEs ARE HISTORY. You twits that still sup­port them are cow­ards. GROW UP

  2. geo

    LOL @ Jerry! Were you read­ing the same arti­cle as the rest of us? Yeah, it sounds like they LOVE Quark!

  3. Samuel John Klein

    “jer­ry”:

    it seems you are pathet­i­cal­ly defend­ing Quark. Obviously you are not that saavy in design and more into the bull­shit of technology 

    Swing…and a miss.

  4. Xourque

    That. Was. Awesome. Maybe they just think mak­ing fun of them­selves will make more peo­ple buy their prod­ucts! You know, every­one likes a light heart­ed sales­man. Especially those who retire day after day to their bot­tle of scotch. Nice com­par­i­son: Quark Sales Team = Used Car Salesman; that old Buick, with all the orig­i­nal fea­tures, for just $400 more!

  5. Billy Bob

    Quite an enjoy­able read! Quark is doing what they do best… DAMAGE CONTROL. The com­ment about Quark’s attempts to jus­ti­fy why XPress does­n’t have the cool fea­tures is sooo true. InDesign eats XPress’s lunch plain and simple.
    InDesign does have a few pim­ples, but XPress is rid­dled with pim­ples, warts, scabs and boils.

  6. Ammon

    You know as much as I love InDesign and hate Quark, I don’t under­stand how QXvsID​.com can even remote­ly say that they are objec­tive­ly report­ing this. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big sup­port­er of this web­site and hope Quark shriv­els away into noth­ing­ness, but don’t you think it’s time to put away the whole, “we don’t take sides” garbage? Just come out with it and say, “we don’t like quark”?

  7. Dule

    Why would you hope for a com­pa­ny to go down? Why would you hope for oth­er amer­i­cans to be out of work? Just because you have a ter­ri­ble opin­ion about a prod­uct? You guys are unbe­liev­ably pathet­ic. How about this? you don’t like some­thing then don’t use it! So much time and ener­gy spent in argu­ments that seri­ous­ly gets more ridicu­lous every­time. Like your Mac argu­ments. Today you can do on a PC any­thing that a Mac can do, peri­od. In the design world, in the graph­ic design world as well as the music pro­duc­tion world.

  8. steve

    Jerry, get a life man, this looks much more like trash talk to me than a cor­dial exchange between indi­vid­ual with dif­fer­ent opin­ion. Jerry, grow up!

  9. james

    I’m also in agree­ment, that this site is pret­ty biased in favor of InDesign. ID also has it fair share of short­com­ings, but you wouldn’t know it form this site. I also pre­fer InDesign over Quark, but I’d pre­fer if this site was tru­ly neutral..

  10. David Blatner

    I was very sur­prised by this post­ing here. Sure, the Quark review­ers’ guide is biased, but this site isn’t sup­posed to be. But more to the point, it appears that the QXvID staff had­n’t actu­al­ly used the QX7 beta in some cas­es. I’ve used both prod­ucts exten­sive­ly and while InDesign is still the win­ner, it’s also clear that QX7 per­forms some tasks sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter than ID (some drop shad­ow effects, some palette mgmt, some trans­paren­cy effects, and so on). I’m pleased because it’ll force Adobe to inno­vate even more and we (the users) all win. But don’t harsh on Quark because they’re try­ing to play the game.
    –David Blatner, co-host, InDesignSecrets​.com

  11. Sam

    I can’t stop smil­ing. What I have learnt by read­ing all this stuff is that keep your mind open. Nothing is per­fect, so use the prod­uct which suites your needs more than any­thing else. If I am in news­pa­per indus­try I will pre­fer Quark because of its cool fea­ture Collaboratiion. ID may be used bet­ter in some oth­er areas. Instead of accus­ing Quark as com­pa­ny, we should appre­ci­ate their effort because if they don’t come up with com­pete­tive prod­uct, you will see Adobe doing the same as Quark did in 90’s. So guys please learn to appre­ci­ate the good prod­uct. I have seen long and elab­o­ra­tive arti­cles in praise of XPress 7.0, I am sure that they all aren’t lieing. My heart and mind both says that this realease from Quark is more than worth. Company has noth­ing to do with your day to day activ­i­ties but their prod­uct has. If you don’t like Quark as a com­pa­ny, that fine but instead of just bash­ing them as a com­pa­ny, just try Xpress 7.0 and I am sure you will bite the your words.

  12. Theuns Kruger

    I live in South Africa. Here the cur­ren­cy is the Rand and is cur­rent­ly trad­ing at about R6.50 to $1… Software such as Adobe CS2 Premium Edition cost around R9500 (that includes PhotoShop, InDesign, Illustrator, GoLive and a whole host of extras). QuarkXPress 6.5 costs R18 500.00 (and that’s not even the Passport Edition). The term ‘Value for Money’ or ‘Bang for your Buck’ takes on a whole new mean­ing. I’ve used QuarkXPress for 12 years, and InDesign for 2. I think I can safe­ly say that I won’t go back to Quark…

  13. Victor Oleny

    Thank you for the won­der­ful article.

    And from now on:

    “QuarkVSInDesign​.com, a pro-InDesign website…”

  14. Ammon

    I take back what I said about want­i­ng Quark to go down. I don’t like their prod­uct and there­fore don’t use it, but I appre­ci­ate the com­pe­ti­tion that goes on between Adobe and Quark.

  15. Pariah S. Burke Post author

    Thanks for the com­ments, everyone.

    Yes, accu­sa­tions of this site bing pro-InDesign / anti-Quark are common–and cyclical.

    In the mid­dle and toward the end of InDesign release life­times, when there’s lit­tle InDesign news to report, QuarkXPress tends to warm up with new prod­ucts, announce­ments, and oth­er news. During those times there’s a lot of Quark-related cov­er­age on Quark VS InDesign​.com and not much InDesign- or Adobe-related. And, dur­ing those times, Quark VS InDesign​.com is accused of being pro-Quark / anti-InDesign.

    It’s cycli­cal and inevitable when your entire mis­sion is to report on a war where so many passions–and jobs–line up on either side. And, believe me, peo­ple are pas­sion­ate. How many soft­ware indus­try ana­lysts get hate mail and death threats from both InD and QX fans?

    Two weeks ago I was pub­licly accused of being “pro-Quark while pre­tend­ing to be pro-InDesign” for com­ments I made about QX7 being a leap for­ward not only for Quark but for the pub­lish­ing indus­try and its future.

    Quark VS InDesign​.com is not anti-Quark. It’s anti‑b.s. If Adobe had put out a review­er’s guide with the bold state­ments of Quark’s, this would be a sto­ry lam­poon­ing that. I don’t make it up; I just react to it.

    Someone said, beyond these com­ments, that it’s not right to kick a man when he’s down.

    Quark’s not as down as many think. If QX7 weren’t such a big rebound for Quark, I would nev­er have run the above sto­ry. Six months ago, Quark was def­i­nite­ly down. And I held back sev­er­al edi­to­ri­als and satires that came across my desk. They were inter­est­ing and would have been good reads, but they held no real val­ue to read­ers beyond tak­ing jabs at Quark’s mistakes–mistakes that have already been made pub­lic. Quark had a rough 2005, and I saw no need to add to the com­pa­ny’s prob­lems unnec­es­sar­i­ly. In my opin­ion as edi­tor of this site, the only pur­pose of pub­lish­ing those pieces would have been to be mean to Quark. I’m not mean, and nei­ther is Quark VS InDesign​.com.

    InDesign is still a bet­ter prod­uct than QX7 for many uses–for all the usu­al reasons–but QX7 does some impor­tant things that InD does­n’t. In cer­tain work­flows, these new or updat­ed fea­tures will make all the dif­fer­ence in the world. Quark has final­ly got­ten into the fight, and they’re doing it where and how it counts, not just with over zeal­ous post­cards, adver­to­r­i­al, and speech­es. And, they’ll have it on the mar­ket at least 6 months ahead of InD CS3, which will allow them to dig in and hold the indus­tries they’re targeting.

    Xpress has always been a good and amaz­ing prod­uct. I’ve been at this since the pre-DTP rev­o­lu­tion days. I remem­ber what it was like to strip and wax my own lay­outs by hand, to cut my own col­or seps. Xpress–even PageMaker–are amaz­ing tools when you remem­ber doing it by hand. I even like Xpress (shock­ing, I know). I love InDesign, of course, because InD did most things bet­ter, more eas­i­ly, and a good deal more enjoy­ably than Xpress. The advan­tages of InD over QX7 are sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er the advan­tages of InD over QX6x. However, just because InD is a bet­ter prod­uct, that does­n’t make Xpress a bad one.

    I’ve nev­er advo­cat­ed the demise of Quark as a soft­ware pub­lish­ing company–I pre­dict it, but I’ve nev­er advo­cat­ed it. When it hap­pens, it will be sad for the indus­try becauese a piece of his­to­ry (rocky or oth­er­wise) will have been lost. It will also be sad for con­sumers because, as most rec­og­nize, com­pe­ti­tion is healthy.

    Despite the fact that Photoshop has­n’t had real­is­tic com­pe­ti­tion since Adobe bought Aldus and killed PhotoStyler, Adobe has nev­er slacked off there. Keeping up with the Joneses is not what moti­vates Adobe devel­op­ment, so it’s unlike­ly that a lack of com­pe­ti­tion in the DTP space would cause InD and InC to lag. Still, inno­va­tions in QX will inspire inno­va­tions in InD & InC, and vice ver­sa. We, the con­sumers, are the ones who will reap the ben­e­fit. I want QX and Quark to stay around for a num­ber of rea­sons, but that one foremost.

    For me, per­son­al­ly, Quark clos­ing will be sad­den­ing for those same rea­sons but also because, among all the dif­fer­ent hats I wear, I like my ten-gallon Quark VS InDesign​.com hat most. I love cov­er­ing this war, giv­ing the blow-by-blow, call­ing Quark on its antics–and watch­ing Adobe like a hawk for sim­i­lar antics. It’s like watch­ing a years-long hock­ey game.

    No, Quark’s in a much stronger posi­tion today because of QX7 than they were a year ago. That com­pa­ny is nowhere near as down as many think, and they’re by no means out.

    If the day comes that QX over­takes InD as the best prod­uct for the job, I’ll be the first to say it–loudly. QX7 is a lot clos­er to doing that, actu­al­ly, than you might think. Read my full, unbi­ased review of QuarkXPress 7 next week to find out why.

    Man, it’s going to be a fun hock­ey game!

  16. Stephen Beals

    I’ve been play­ing with the Quark 7 beta and am pret­ty favor­ably impressed so far. It’s a sol­id pro­gram and Quark has been offer­ing a sol­id pro­gram for much longer than Adobe has. They made a LOT of mis­takes and are pay­ing the price, but even if you LOVE InDesign (and I real­ly like InDesign), you have to have some aware­ness that Adobe would nev­er have got­ten from PageMaker to ID2 with­out Quark. They had a seri­ous­ly infe­ri­or prod­uct just a few years ago. Even though it was MUCH cheap­er than Quark, Quark held the lions share of the pro­fes­sion­al mar­ket. If Quark 7 isn’t excel­lent, the com­pa­ny is like­ly to die. But I real­ly think they have done a much bet­ter job with 7 than they did with the first releas­es of 6. Those of us who rely on top qual­i­ty effi­cient reli­able prod­ucts ought to be root­ing for Quark 7 to be a great suc­cess. And for ID3 to be even bet­ter. And, Oh yes, did we men­tion Universal Binary yet?

    SB

  17. Peter

    Come on, Pariah,
    at least be hon­est and admit your per­son­al pref­er­ences. Everyone of us try­ing to be objec­tive will find it dif­fi­cult to write a tru­ly objec­tive arti­cle. And if even David Blatner sees your objec­tive­ness gone…

    And you are definit­ly biased, just look at your arti­cle before try­ing to defend Adobe’s lame sup­port for Intel-based machines.
    They force us to upgrade to CS3 if I want speed on a Intel-based box.
    If Quark had done that (remem­ber 68k/PowerPC and OS 9/OS X?) we would be bitch­ing about it… Do I know whether I need CS3? No. Do I know I will be buy­ing a MacBook Pro and want speed and native sup­port? Yes.

    So please make your com­ments a bit more objec­tive again and let’s lean back and ben­e­fit from the com­pe­ti­tion between the two vendors.

    Greetings
    Peter

  18. John

    I’m quite unim­pressed with this arti­cle. No ques­tion about the fact that the Reviewer Guide has some flaws, but XPress 7 has pret­ty much leapfrogged InDesign. We tried com­po­si­tion zones with­in the group – page cre­ation takes less than a quater of the time. The per­for­mance isn’t the great­est, but it is very sol­id for a beta ver­sion. And, we can hope that both Adobe and Quark keep com­ing up with bet­ter soft­ware that leapfrog one anoth­er; and not keep drop­ping prod­uct cost as their pri­ma­ry goal to gain mar­ket share! Because the only way they can drop costs is by shift­ing jobs to India. Acrobat 7 – 100% cre­at­ed in India. QuarkXPress 6.x – 100% cre­at­ed in india… and this shift keeps hap­pen­ing with time. Instead of pro­mot­ing both com­pa­nies, you go anti Quark to cre­ate a shift that makes the com­pe­ti­tion drop prices by fir­ing in the US and hir­ing in India…
    And Pairah, i’m sor­ry to say this, but from what i’ve seen, there is only Quark bash­ing on this Web site. Indesign has a lot more bugs that you can imag­ine. We use both prod­ucts here. Migrating one of our edi­tions from Quark to ID has been a total night­mare, which is why we are hold­ing off on the oth­er 20. Neither of the two soft­ware are real­ly upto the mark, but they are get­ting bet­ter. I am look­ing fore­ward to your “In depth review of the QuarkXPress 7 beta” next week, and in my eyes, that will decide whether this site is sim­ply anti-Quark, or if its real­ly worth anoth­er visit.
    – John

  19. Mike

    It is to be expect­ed that a com­pa­ny will pro­mote their prod­uct as aggres­sive­ly as pos­si­ble, and to crit­i­cize Quark for doing so is a sad indi­ca­tion of how pet­ty this debate has become (and how small-minded your edi­to­r­i­al direc­tion has become). 

    If you want to find humor in mar­ket­ing, just look at the many, many slo­gans that Adobe has rolled out over the years, each a highly-crafted (and expen­sive) effort to posi­tion the com­pa­ny for what­ev­er direc­tion they hap­pen to be tak­ing at the time. 

    Who cares what Quark says in some back­ground mar­ket­ing mate­r­i­al? And even more mys­te­ri­ous is who cares what the sup­posed “staff” of quarkvsin­de­sign has to say about it? And as long as we’re call­ing Quark on their hype, what about your own ref­er­ences to the Quark vs. InDesign “office” and “our staff?” You are clear­ly try­ing to cre­ate an impres­sion that your part-time Website is some­thing of sub­stance when it is most like­ly run out of a spare bed­room. Any quick review of your sta­ble of self-promotional Websites proves that you know the val­ue of hype and have no trou­ble stretch­ing the truth for your own benefit. 

    I hes­i­tat­ed to spend time com­ment­ing, but as a sup­port­ive XPress user (they’ve always done right by me) I could­n’t let this one go un-challenged. Your time as an Adobe employ­ee is not only cloud­ing your view, it’s expos­ing your bias.

  20. Edward

    I agree with Mike. And i like what Quark is doing. They have real­ly start­ed lis­ten­ing. And like John and Stephen, i too have used XPress 7 to quite an extent. Very good new fea­tures. I’m just wait­ing for soem of the XTs to be made com­pat­i­ble before we go in for the upgrade. 

    And the edi­to­r­i­al team here needs to start churn­ing out some good arti­cles. Your review of 7 will be read by quite a few of us. It would be inter­est­ing to see if you are actu­al­ly as unba­iased as you claim to be.

    cheers

  21. Sam

    I start­ed say­ing that Pariah’s com­ment were pro ID a long time back. His unnec­es­sar­i­ly bash­ing have caused more harm to him than to any­one else. Whenever I read any arti­cle over here, I keep this thing in my mind that there will be lots of Quark bash­ing. I just smile and pass by the bash­ing. Pariah’s you bet­ter learn writ­ing unbi­ased arti­cle than accus­ing Quark for being infe­ri­or. Your arti­cles are far far infe­ri­or if we go by the pur­pose of this site which it is sup­posed to serve.

  22. Pingback: Quark VS InDesign

  23. Peter

    Hi, Pariah,

    is the Quark 7 arti­cle only that good because you got bashed here?
    Anyhow, thanks for the almost unbi­ased article.

    Greetings
    Peter

  24. Damo

    I have read through more of your web­site. Its pret­ty obvi­ous­ly a Quark bash­ing and In Design pro­mo­tion vehi­cle. Nothing worth see­ing here if I want some impar­tial views of both DTP packages.

  25. P Soteriou

    As much as I now dis­like Quark the com­pa­ny and its soft­ware (even though I used Quark from 1989 to 2003) I think it’s good for the page lay­out soft­ware indus­try to have some com­pe­ti­tion. With no com­peti­ton Adobe may get into a monop­oly posi­tion, get com­pla­cent, over­price its prod­uct and pro­vide out­stand­ing­ly poor cus­tomer ser­vice just as Quark did.
    Having said that, I will still cheer if and when Quark folds (that will be some jus­tice seen for the years of sub stan­dard ser­vice, over­pric­ing, inflex­i­bilty and just plain arrogance). 

    That review­er guide is just pure gold. It’s the best mar­ket­ing doc­u­ment for Indesign ever!
    P – Indesign convert

  26. Jeff Z.

    P – I whole­heart­ed­ly dis­agree with your assump­tion that Adobe would abuse a monop­oly as Quark did and ask if you have back­up to your claim. Adobe and Quark are VERY dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies, so assum­ing one will go down the same road as the oth­er is short­sight­ed. This isn’t a debate about com­pe­ti­tion, because I agree it’s a good thing, but you sim­ply can’t equate Adobe, Inc. and Quark, Inc.

    Photoshop has­n’t had a real com­peti­tor in who knows how long, yet Adobe still instills new, worth­while fea­tures, which will help ensure it stays on top. It’s much eas­i­er to hit a lum­ber­ing, giant tar­get than a mov­ing, adapt­able one. Quark is now learn­ing that the hard way.

  27. P Soteriou

    You should re-read my post. 

    I made no assump­tion and no claim that Adobe would do that. 

    I said they ‘MAY get com­pla­cent’ – not ‘ARE com­pla­cent’. My point was that if at some point in the future there were an envi­ron­ment of no com­pe­ti­tion for Adobe, then that would be a pos­si­ble sce­nario. A mono­ploy envi­ron­ment is rarely good for consumers. 

    I have absolute­ly no prob­lem with Adobe or their cus­tomer ser­vice. I use their prod­ucts every­day and whole­heart­ed­ley rec­om­mend their soft­ware and have high regard for their lev­el of cus­tomer ser­vice and pric­ing structures.

    I take your point about Photoshop, that is true.

    P.S.

  28. Jeff Z.

    P – I did mis­read your post. Sorry about that.

  29. DD_ Creative Director

    The war’s over. It all came down to mon­ey in the end

    Quark’s spin doc­tors can’t fix what poor sales pol­i­cy should have rec­ti­fied 3 years ago – when you’re buy­ing upgrade licences for a stu­dio full of com­put­ers InDesign is a frac­tion of the price – the fea­tures are a bonus.

  30. DD_ Creative Director

    The war’s over. It all came down to mon­ey in the end

    Quark’s spin doc­tors can’t fix what poor sales pol­i­cy should have rec­ti­fied 3 years ago – when you’re buy­ing upgrade licences for a stu­dio full of com­put­ers InDesign is a frac­tion of the price – the fea­tures are a bonus.

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