Macworld Snubs InDesign CS, Awards "Most Improved Page-Layout Program" Eddy To Quark

10 thoughts on “Macworld Snubs InDesign CS, Awards "Most Improved Page-Layout Program" Eddy To Quark”

1. 

   Mark W. 30 December 2004

   I think Macworld was actu­al­ly hon­est, if you read care­ful­ly. In the 2003 Eddys Macworld “looked at near­ly every new Mac prod­uct on the mar­ket between Nov. 1, 2002 to Nov. 1, 2003, eval­u­at­ing their over­all qual­i­ty as well as their util­i­ty, inno­va­tion, and ele­gance.” This time they just “nom­i­nat­ed their favorites.”

   It does­n’t sur­prise me, real­ly. 6.5 is great, but when it comes down to which is more improved, there’s no com­par­i­son. InDesign CS blew away its pre­ced­ing ver­sion. 6.5 just makes a good prod­uct (Quark 6) even better.

2. 

   Ryan Dean 31 December 2004

   Everyone knows MacWorld is apple’s lap dog. Don’t ever expect any unbi­ased Mac news from MacWorld.

3. 

   Jason Snell 31 December 2004

   An inter­est­ing arti­cle, but your premise is ludi­crous. As has already been point­ed out, our Eddy Awards are for prod­ucts released in a spe­cif­ic span: November 1 to November 1. In this case, we gave Quark an award because we felt that it deserved it for the 6.5 update, which was impres­sive and – a shock­er giv­en Quark’s track record in deal­ing with its cus­tomers – free. It was not an either-or deci­sion – if Adobe had released a major revi­sion to InDesign, we could have giv­en either prod­uct an award, or both!

   I will also point out that, in fact, in 2003 we gave Adobe an Editor’s Choice Award for the entire CS suite, includ­ing InDesign. That was the year those prod­ucts were eli­gi­ble and we hon­ored InDesign in that capacity.

   I also think if you check the record you’ll find we’ve been quite favor­able toward InDesign! I believe we’ve even pub­lished arti­cles that rec­om­mend it over QuarkXpress. So is your beef that we’re tilt­ed against InDesign some­how, or are you sim­ply angry that we dared to say any­thing nice about Quark?

   As for com­men­tor Ryan Dean, all I can say is, your com­ment shows how lit­tle you real­ly know about the sub­ject you’re attempt­ing to talk about.

   -Jason Snell, Editorial Director, Macworld

4. 

   Pariah S. Burke 5 January 2005

   Jason,

   Thank you for the response. It is very well-written. Your com­ment answers the most obvi­ous point of the orig­i­nal arti­cle with­out being too spe­cif­ic, diverts atten­tion from the sec­ondary points, and employs the time hon­ored and high­ly effec­tive tac­tic of turn­ing the atten­tion back on the orig­i­nal writer, putting him on the defense, with a counter accu­sa­tion of bias. :-)

   Now, I will return the favor.

   Of course I am not angry that you said any­thing nice about Quark. Look where you are! Read the sto­ries on this very site about the com­pa­ny. Since Aulakh took the reins, Quark has been a very dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny. Reported here long before Macworld’s inti­ma­tion that Quark has begun to care about its cus­tomers are sev­er­al sto­ries about Quark’s efforts to please and even build rela­tion­ships with customers–the restora­tion of the Quark user forums, the com­pa­ny’s atten­dance at indus­try con­ven­tions and events after years of absence, open­ing a dia­log through sur­veys and work­shops with customers.

   XPress 6.5 (inclu­sive of the PSD Import Xtension) is amaz­ing, not only for the fact that it has more new fea­tures than the last full dot release of the XPress, not only for the fact that it actu­al­ly has InDesign beat on han­dling PSD files, but most notably for the fact that it is free. As both our pub­li­ca­tions agree, the no-cost release of 6.5 is a tremen­dous good faith ges­ture on Quark’s part. 

   My point was the appar­ent bias of the Eddys toward Apple’s agenda.

   You are, of course, cor­rect: Adobe released Creative Suite just before the begin­ning of the Eddy eli­gi­bil­i­ty peri­od on 1 November 2003.

   But what of After Effects? It was updat­ed in the mid­dle of the eli­gi­bil­i­ty peri­od. Apple’s Motion, which Macworld chose over After Effects for the Best Motion Graphics App Eddy, is typ­i­cal­ly reviewed as a good start, but, as a first ver­sion appli­ca­tion, not yet a seri­ous com­peti­tor to After Effects.

   In the Eddy award copy itself Motion is list­ed as infe­ri­or to After Effects!

   “It won’t replace pro­grams such as After Effects,” wrote Macworld edi­tor Dan Miller. “But with its com­bi­na­tion of per­for­mance, sim­plic­i­ty, and price, it’ll be join­ing them in the tool­box­es of many graph­ics pros.”

   If Motion is the Best Motion Graphics App of the year, why does Miller all but state that After Effects is bet­ter?

   If the point was that Motion is less expen­sive than After Effects, why was­n’t there a dis­clo­sure that Eddy judge­ments were based upon price? Why was­n’t the award Lowest Price Motion Graphics App of the year?

   Even you must see that the 2004 Eddy choic­es fall right along Apple’s agen­da. As has been wide­ly hint­ed at by all rel­e­vant media out­lets, includ­ing Quark VS InDesign, Adobe has fall­en out of Apple’s favor. And in increas­ing­ly fre­quent mar­kets, Apple is sud­den­ly hell-bent on going head-to-head with Adobe.

   Whether there tru­ly exist­ed in the Eddy choic­es an edi­to­r­i­al bias against Adobe–or at least, to align with Apple’s agenda–there is the appear­ance of one.

5. 

   kitty 6 January 2005

   NOT ludi­cris

   lidi­crous

   :–)

6. 

   Maximum 6 January 2005

   These licridous accu­sa­tions against Macworld are sim­ply that: lisi­croud! If there is any bias at all, it’s sim­ply on the part of egre­gar­i­ous writ­ers who fail to grasp the essen­tial intri­c­as­ties of pageant the­o­ry, which clear­ly state: the best can­di­date is the pret­ti­est, and the peo­ple with the most at stake to lose are the ones with the most effron­tive lobbyists.

   —mala­prop sic 

7. 

   Jason Snell 6 January 2005

   Now, to be fair, your entire piece is about Quark and InDesign, and you neglect­ed to even admit that you mis­read or failed to read the descrip­tion of how the Eddy Awards work (and have worked for 20 years). I find it fun­ny that now you are attempt­ing to rede­fine the debate as one about Apple’s “agen­da” as well as Motion vs. After Effects, since that was hard­ly the focus of your orig­i­nal entry. But that’s fine.

   Why did­n’t we give After Effects an Eddy this year? It’s hard to say – as we always say, the Eddys are a sur­vey of edi­to­r­i­al pref­er­ence. There’s no mag­ic for­mu­la involved – we just pick win­ners. I will say that since After Efffects won the Eddy in 2003, it was less like­ly to also win it in 2004, espe­cial­ly since we only look at what’s _new_ in a prod­uct from the pre­vi­ous ver­sion… if we think Product X ver­sion 2.0 is the best prod­uct ever made, and the fol­low­ing year they release Product X 2.5, and it’s still the best prod­uct ever made, that update still might not win an Eddy. Why? Not because the prod­uct was­n’t great, but because it did­n’t real­ly change that dra­mat­i­cal­ly from the pre­vi­ous year. Eddy is all about what’s new this year. It’s not meant to reflect the best prod­ucts of all time, or the best prod­ucts cur­rent­ly in use – it’s meant to reflect the best inno­va­tions of a 12-month period.

   Now, a good argu­ment could be made that that’s not the right way to run an awards process. But that’s the way Eddy has been run for 20 years and it seems unlike­ly to change into some­thing else at this point. :-)

   Motion, on the oth­er hand, costs a third of After Effects and was essen­tial­ly a brand-new appli­ca­tion this year. We felt that deserved an award. However, it’s not right to sug­gest that some­how we pit­ted After Effects against Motion. The Eddys don’t work like the Oscars in that regard. If we had want­ed to give an award to After Effects this year, we could have, while still hon­or­ing Motion. However, After Effects’ changes in 2004 did­n’t move our Editors enough to give it anoth­er stat­ue. (After Effects is per­haps the most heav­i­ly Eddyed prod­uct of all time! I don’t know how many times it has one, but it’s bunches).

   Yes, we think After Effects is bet­ter than Motion, and as you point­ed out, we have said so in print. That does­n’t mean we’re being incon­sis­tent in offer­ing an award to a brand-new prod­uct that offers an inter­est­ing set of fea­tures for a very inter­est­ing price. If we had refused to hon­or After Effects over the years, I’d see your point, but we have real­ly been out on the front lines of pro­mot­ing After Effects for what it is – a fan­tas­tic product.

   Have Apple and Adobe had a falling out? Perhaps, per­haps not. The truth is more com­pli­cat­ed than those on the out­side might know – just as it’s easy for those on the out­side to assume that Macworld and Apple have a cozy rela­tion­ship where we ask them for their most recent agen­da and then par­rot it. I can tell you that the lat­ter is not even remote­ly true, but of course you don’t have to believe me. 

   In any event, the Eddy Awards pay no atten­tion to the rumored pol­i­tics of these big com­pa­nies. We look at the prod­ucts of the past year, how they’ve changed from pre­vi­ous ver­sions, and pick our favorites. Then we give them award names so that there’s some­thing to run in the mag­a­zine and engrave on the stat­ue. It real­ly is that sim­ple – and let me just say that if Adobe releas­es new major revs of their prod­ucts in 2005, there’s a good chance they’ll be in line for awards this time next year. Will we have switched sides in some sort of mar­ket­ing “war”? No… we’ll just be writ­ing about the prod­ucts that came out in 2005.

   I can’t con­trol peo­ple’s assump­tions about bias­es we have. I hon­est­ly had no idea that there were so many peo­ple who were con­vinced that Apple is in a war against Adobe. Maybe because I actu­al­ly talk to peo­ple from Apple and Adobe, and know that the truth is far more com­pli­cat­ed than that. Or maybe I just can’t see the for­est for the trees… any­thing’s possible.

   I’m sor­ry you see bias in our choic­es; I can tell you hon­est­ly that the bias­es we had in choos­ing Eddys were our own, not any­one elses; that we chose prod­ucts based on our long-standing Eddy rules; and that we haven’t ignored major Adobe prod­ucts in the past and won’t in the future, despite the lim­it­ed show­ing by Adobe in 2005.

   To wrap up, my main point in post­ing here was only to point out that you mis­un­der­stood how the Eddy Awards work: that we’re lim­it­ed to a sin­gle year, and that’s why Quark got an award and InDesign did­n’t. If we had pit­ted the two prod­ucts against one anoth­er and required that only one win (it’s hap­pened in the past), then you could def­i­nite­ly argue that we were choos­ing sides. But in this case, it had to do with the way the Eddy process works.

   That’s all I can real­ly say on this mat­ter – I hope some­how this has been illu­mi­nat­ing, at least when it comes to how the Eddy Awards work and how they don’t work. We have a very good rela­tion­ship with Adobe and I think that if you talked to them you’d find that they would say we’ve been quite fair to them in the past, and will con­tin­ue to do so in the future. Citing Quark’s inter­est­ing growth and improve­ment in 2004 does­n’t have to be a slight to InDesign; laud­ing Motion’s entry into the space does­n’t mean we hate After Effects (far from it – as you point­ed out, we went out of our way to praise it with­in our descrip­tion of Motion!).

   Anyway, thanks for your time and ener­gy. Hopefully I’ve cleared up some misconceptions.

   -Jason Snell, Editorial Director, Mac Publishing

8. 

   Pariah S. Burke 6 January 2005

   Thank you again for the response. You have indeed cleared up many things.

   As I said in my last e‑mail, the incon­gruity of a “best” award giv­en to an appli­ca­tion that, even in the award jus­ti­fi­ca­tion itself, was char­ac­ter­ized as not the best, was the biggest thing that still nagged at me. You’ve explained the process of choos­ing Eddy’s–and that choice in particular–sufficiently to sat­is­fy my curiosity.

   For the record, pri­or to pub­lish­ing the orig­i­nal post, I was aware of the Nov 1st – Nov 1st criteria–I not­ed that in the orig­i­nal post, as a mat­ter of fact. Despite that knowl­edge, the lan­guage of the award titles and their descrip­tions com­bined with the choic­es for Editor’s Awards were what caused me concern.

   Also, for the record… You stat­ed: “Have Apple and Adobe had a falling out? Perhaps, per­haps not. The truth is more com­pli­cat­ed than those on the out­side might know — just as it’s easy for those on the out­side to assume that Macworld and Apple have a cozy rela­tion­ship where we ask them for their most recent agen­da and then par­rot it.”

   No, things are not that black-and-white when it comes to the pol­i­tics of major soft­ware com­pa­nies. For years now I have been an insid­er in that indus­try, first direct­ly inside it, and now report­ing on it. To try to explain the intri­ca­cies of rela­tion­ships between large and estab­lished OS and appli­ca­tion man­u­fac­tur­ers, espe­cial­ly where one or both com­pete in both areas, would take reams and ulti­mate­ly still prove incom­plete. So too would any pos­si­ble descrip­tion of the pres­sures that can be brought to bear, sub­tle­ly and often indi­rect­ly, by such enti­ties on part­ners, ven­dors, and oth­ers whose liveli­hoods depend, in some way, on those entities.

   That… is a debate that few real­ly want to get into. Certainly not I, not here.

   With your illu­mi­nat­ing descrip­tion of the awards cri­te­ria and process, I am sat­is­fied and will let the top­ic drop.

   I have for many years been a fan of Macworld, rely­ing on it for objec­tive, con­sis­tent news and infor­ma­tion. I would have to go back and check to see how long you’ve been at its helm, but, this dis­cus­sion aside, you have an excel­lent publication.

   Thank you again–very much–for respond­ing and for your time involved in those responses.

9. 

   max 18 January 2005

   In Russia we have not yet russ­ian hyphen­ation for Quark 6. The one and only devel­op­er said that Quark did not want to share doc­u­men­ta­tion. They don’t know about our lit­tle country :-
   About half a year I migrat­ed on InDesign. I am sor­ry. I loved QuarkXPress.

10. 

    mark 29 August 2005

    I have read all these posts and have to say that I have been using Quark for years and have always liked it. To com­ment on the argu­ment, I would like to first say that I feel com­pa­nies try to stuff every­thing into pro­grams these days. This swiss army knife approach seems to be counter pro­duc­tive . I rather have a pro­gram that is REALLY good at one thing than OK at many. If I am going to lay­out a brochure then I use a lay­out pro­gram. If I am going to design a web­page, I look toward macro­me­dia prod­ucts. How could fea­tures in quark/indesign even come close to Dreamweaver for web­de­sign? That being said. I think that stuff­ing pro­grams to try to become a one-stop-shop for all your design need is crazy or at least unre­al­is­tic at this point. A good pro­gram does what it ports to do well and sim­ply. I don’t want to get lost find­ing what I need by fum­bling through an ever expand­ing col­lec­tion of pal­letes and tools that try to do EVERYTHING. It seems that the ever expand­ing fea­ture set just clut­ters things up and takes from the ease of use. Sure there are always need­ed fea­tures that can be added and it is great when they are inte­grat­ed seem­less­ly into the flow of things.
    I am not a read­er of Macworld but I would like to just make a com­ment on the eddy awards. If I were read­ing a mag that rec­comend­ed prod­ucts I would Like to know that the prod­ucts rec­om­mend­ed are the BEST at what they do… not the most improved since last ver­sion. Cause if a pro­gram is already much bet­ter than the com­pi­ti­tion but the chal­lenger makes great strides for­ward to close the gap a lit­tle, would not war­rent it to be high­light­ed as an award­ed prod­uct with­out stip­u­lat­ing that it is now a prod­uct worth con­sid­er­ing BUT the stan­dard “pro­gram” is still top of the pile! It would be a dis­er­vice to your read­ers if they were to pur­chase that prod­uct and lat­ter find out that they sould have gone to the actu­al BETTER prod­uct NOT the most improved. If it is to just award a great prod­uct for that year that is fine but it would be good to also see the indus­try stan­dard. that is my 2cents.…

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