On 2/11/03 12:32 AM, "Obi-Wan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Most professional designers and design firms have dumped Quark in favor of > InDesign. I work with some of the biggest ad firms in the country, and most > of them have made the jump.
That may very well be the case in YOUR experience, but in mine, Quark still has a massive amount of marketshare. I still run into so many people that don't have the first clue what InDesign is. I work in the printing industry to and, although we have both applications, most of the setups we get from customers are Quark-based (I'd say at least 3-to-1, probably more). InDesign is a better product, IMHO, but Quark has the workflow advantage. There are several things that are going to have to happen before InDesign makes any REAL headway into toppling Quark: 1. More plugins need to become available for InDesign. With InDesign's amazingly open architecture, I don't think this is a matter of when, just if. It's biggest hurdle here is the chicken and the egg thing: many plugin developers won't port until InDesign's marketshare is higher, many users won't switch to InDesign until the plugins show up. 2. Companies need to upgrade hardware. Many companies are still running older versions of Quark on older hardware. Why? It works. They have an established workflow that were developed using these older versions on the older hardware. They have been extensively debugged and fine-tuned over the years. Why fiddle with something that is not broken. New hardware is not a "Oh, sure. Why not?" proposition. It's expensive, and especially in today's economic times, such expenditures MUST be WELL justified. 3. Better Quark-to-InDesign conversion tools. Designers have better things to do with their time than convert tons of old Quark files to the InDesign format and then have to endlessly fiddle with the particulars to make sure everything turned out just right. Of course, I don't know how likely it is for current conversion tools will get any better. (Remember the old Quark->PageMaker conversion tool that Adobe used to offer? Simply horrid.) > Quark is outdated, expensive, bloated and > hateful of it's users. Agreed. > What company is as evil as quark? They still don't > have a Mac OS X version shipping. They don't even have an estimated ship > date for a Mac OS X version. OS X has been around for what those of us in > the industry consider a "long time." Quark is a joke. Quark the company? Yes. QuarkXPress the product? Nope. Like it or not, it's the industry standard and therefore a force to be reckoned with. That isn't to say that that can't change over time, just that it hasn't yet. > It's the *PC* of the > desktop publishing world. For years they have had their way with their > users. Mainly because there was no alternative. Agreed again. > With the advent of > InDesign2 people now have a choice, and Quark now has a viable competitor. Yes they do. InDesign IS a VERY viable, worthy competitor. I'm going to be very interested in seeing how this will eventually turn out. Quark the company is going to continue to shoot itself in the foot, I believe, and it's only a matter of time before more and more users give up in frustration. One of the biggest worries I have, however, is that Quark's continued attitude about Mac OS X will only cause these print houses and ad agencies to seriously look at switching to Windows. I'm seeing it happen more and more and it REALLY frightens me. Sincerely, Scott -- "I don't need to compromise my principles, because they don't have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway." -Calvin -- G-Books is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Check our web site for refurbished PowerBooks | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-Books list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-books%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
