Could Quark make a comeback?

[Rocketpig]

After hearing Adobe's statement that the Intel Macs won't be supported until the next CS revision late this year or early next year, I was surprised to hear this:

http://www.quark.com

Quark is releasing their Xpress Beta 7 program which is universal binary. This is quite a turnaround and apparently Quark learned their lesson after waiting for over a year before supporting OSX during the transition from OS9.

I might just switch back to Quark if Xpress 7 is decent. I haven't used Quark since 2001 after Indesign 1.5/2.0 came out.

It would be my way of giving the finger to Adobe for being so stubborn about the Apple transition to x86.

[DesignerScott]

Unlikely that quark will make a comeback, and I wonder if it's a jab at Apple for digging up Aperature? Maybe they thought it would sting intel mac sales slightly.
I'm just kidding, I don't think that Adobe is that much of a bully, I just hope that Quark doesn't survive any longer than it has to on life support.

[turbogfx]

They definitely have an uphill battle to fight. Adobe must really want to pollish off CS before deploying.

[MD]

It really depends on when apple decides to unveil the new desktops. One of the major reasons Adobe has gained a foothold again is because it comes bundled with CS2. I think a lot of people are itching for a CPU upgrade and if Quark can deliver all the features & stability promised you might have a few switchers back. This is the last stand for Quark and personally I hope they pull it off. It was competition that gave us all the shiny new features of InDesign and Adobe seems to get a bit lazy with their upgrades with no competition. I mean look at Illustrator - how many of the upgrades were really an noticeable improvement over the pervious version? 1 out of 3 maybe? Competition spurs innovation and with Adobe buying up Macromedia we are left with less choices and no significant competition to speak of.

[cjoe]

Never mind Quark, lets go COREL suite!

[PrintDriver]

If Quark 7 works as good on Intel as 6.5 does on the current machines, Adobe has nothing to worry about.

Quark can't get the program to work in one operating system, let alone two. In such a short time. Let's see who really releases a consumer ready program first. Betas don't count.

[captain spanky]

considering i work on quark 5 and none of the printers around here want to accept indesign files... i guess it never went away for me. I'm looking forward to 7 but yeah, can't really see how it can be much better.. 5 isn't much different to 4.1..

Please tell me... without going into great detail or getting into an argument... why is indesign better? the grapevine reckons that it's better for designers but worse for the printers... is that true?

[PrintDriver]

Quark reached their peak at Version 4.11
Adding web-building capability was a useless endeavor.

Most of the large format printer people I know would rather have an InD file than a Q6 file. But they'd also rather have a Q4 file rather than an InD file. It does make sense if you think about it.

The biggest thing about InD and printers is that designers refuse to learn to use the Transparency features correctly and there's a lot of 'fixing' or reproofs when something doesn't happen as intended.

[greyghost]

I do not see Quark making a comeback. InDesign is just too handy - it has all those little options that, when you are laying things out in Quark, require you to run to Photoshop and back all the time. In ID, you can do most things that are generally needed in tweaking a layout, right there.

[PersonasBinar]

So far not a single version of quark supports PDF beyond version 1.3 (acrobat4), or transparency which is what everything seems to be about out these days. Quarks steadfast refusal to offer an upgrade path to even it's most loyal customers has alienated just about everyone. The fact that Q6 is the biggest joke in the world....come on web designers fess up RIGHT NOW.....you all use Q6 for web layouts don't you? They've had their chance and really don;t deserve to be an industry leader whatsoever, as they had just plodded along as if we aren't upto PS level3, Quark only supports level1 postscript and badly at that. Soon there will be no more postscript and it will be all PDF and quark will be useless. Well, more useless than it is now. RIP SUCKA


***side note.... ADOBE PLSPLSPLS ATM for OS-X PLS!!!!!