Typical Mac OS version/hardware setup?

[Broacher]

My kid brother (Mr. Programmerhead) is working on a Quark related project.

Q: What is the 'typical' hardware /OS combo that most pro Mac Quark users would be working on these days?

Thanks!

[urstwile]

I rarely use Quark these days, but I do use it on occasion.

My office machine is an Intel iMac, 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, using OSX Tiger 10.4.10, and 2 gigabytes of RAM. This is with Quark version 6.5.

[Broacher]

Thanks Urstwhile. Do you know of any problems with older OS versions?

[urstwile]

You mean like Panther or Jaguar? I don't know of any specific problems, as our upgrade here at work entailed going from OS9 directly into Tiger (big jump). I do know that the few times I ever worked with pre-OSX versions of Quark (requiring Classic to be launched) that it was buggy as hell, so I'd end up booting directly into OS9 rather than using Classic.

[doubting_thomas]

When I need to launch Quark I do it on a MacPro Dual Quad 3.0 Ghz with 4 gigs
of RAM using OS X 10.4.9. We only have Quark v6.52 because of the lack of
jobs submitted using Quark in general. We have some older Macs that can boot
into OS 9.2 for the odd 4.x file pulled from archive. On my machine Quark 6.52
seems to run a bit better than it did on my old G4 1.25Ghz Mirror Door running
OS 10.3.9. Faster and more stable at least...

["Technical" Terry]

I run Quark maybe once a day. Most of the time I use version 7, but I also have 6.5 installed and available. This is on a G4 400MHz with 1.12GB of RAM running OS10.4.9

Before version 6, we ran 5 on the same machine but with OS9.

[Yossarian]

I'm running Quark 6.5 on a dual 1.8 G5 with 1.5 GB RAM running OS 10.4.8.

We run Quark almost exclusively. I find that Quark has been more stable under Tiger than it was in Panther. Crashes seem most likely for me when working with image-heavy, multi-page layouts.

[jimking]

Ditto to all above. However, Quark 7 is for Tiger not Panther.

[PrintDriver]

Jim has a point. To use Q7 you need to be running Tiger.
Quite honestly I had no trouble at all with 6.5 (gotta do ALL the updates though) on Panther. The machine I have is not top of the line for today's standards but it's no slouch - a 2 gig DP with 2 gig Ram. Quark really isn't as ram hungry as Indesign though.

[jimking]

Jim has a point. To use Q7 you need to be running Tiger.
Quite honestly I had no trouble at all with 6.5 (gotta do ALL the updates though) on Panther. The machine I have is not top of the line for today's standards but it's no slouch - a 2 gig DP with 2 gig Ram. Quark really isn't as ram hungry as Indesign though.
Since I'm in the seperation business I like Quark 7.2 better because it produces better pdfs when dealing with transparency issues and seperations. I don't think I've had an issue sinse updating.

[PrintDriver]

I've not used 7 enough to qualify it. When they didn't make a larger artboard, I think all of my clientele dumped it in favor of InD for that reason alone. Designers hate doing math for scaling factors. (me too!) LOL!

[urstwile]

When my workgroup had its first taste of InDesign, they were pretty much sold on it, so I doubt very much we'll be upgrading to Quark 7. We're on 6.5 at the moment, and will probably remain there, unless our clients insist we use it (that pretty much drives everything). But our biggest client doesn't use Quark, so I doubt that'll happen.