Even Apple has joined in. Many sites (Apple's included) are reporting this story, this version comes from http://www.macobserver.com. The reason I am posting it is due to the spate of discussion we had a while back on the idea of Quark being a reason not to upgrade to 10.x Keep in mind today's announcement that all new Mac born in 2003 forward will only start-up in 10.x.
Jerry [2:30 PM CDT] Apple Adds InDesign Promotional Offer For PowerMac Purchases, Quark Should Pay Attention by Bryan Chaffin Apple has announced a new promotional offer on its Hot Deals page for PowerMac buyers. The company is offering a free copy of InDesign 2.0 with the purchase of any PowerMac G4 system, except for refurbished and other used PowerMacs. InDesign is Adobe's publishing suite that runs natively in Mac OS X. Apple announced earlier today that starting in 2003, new Apple hardware would no longer boot into Classic Mac OS, making InDesign a more attractive product to designers and publishers interested in moving to Mac OS X. Buy a Power Mac G4 between September 10 and December 31, 2002, and Adobe InDesign 2.0 is yours for the asking. For creative professionals who want an integrated suite of layout and publishing tools that runs on Mac OS X v10.2 Jaguar -- and like the concept of saving up to $699 -- it's the ultimate design solution. You can find more information on the promotional offer at Apple's Hot Deals page. Look for the offer titled "Design Freely." Also note that Apple has redesigned its Hot Deals page. [Post Your Comments Below] The Mac Observer Spin: We love to see promotional offers coming from Apple, and this one is a powerful one for Apple and Adobe both. It is likely no coincidence that Apple announced its Mac OS X only path and launched this promotional offer at the same time, though we could be reading far more into it than actually exists. The connection is that Quark Xpress is the lone holdout in major Mac applications for moving to Mac OS X, and Adobe has been aggressively courting that business for InDesign for several years. Adobe has been a staunch supporter of Mac OS X with its product lines, moving each product to the new OS with the next available release. Quark, on the other hand, is nowhere to be found. Now, with one fell swoop, Apple delivers a message to Quark saying that it supports those who support Mac OS X, and Adobe gets a golden opportunity to have InDesign tried by thousands more potential seats than it might otherwise gain access to. It's the combo punch of customers knowing that there will be no new Classic hardware from Apple combined with the free copy of InDesign that will get those users to take a more serious look at InDesign than they might have otherwise. It's smart for both companies, and Apple's customers benefit as well. You can try to take a stick to it, but you can't really beat it. Even Quark will benefit if takes the hint, and moves faster on its Mac OS X efforts. The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be September 24 For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>.
