Quark XPress vs. InDesign

[Phil St. Romain]

Quark XPress 5.0 and Adobe's InDesign 2.0 have been compared in recent issues of MacAddict and Macworld. Aside from the fact that the latter runs on OS X, which would seem to be a major plus, it seems that InDesign has become more than equal to the challenge of taking on Quark as the undisputed page layout editor for the Mac.

I'm wondering how those of you who use both products would rate them.

Also, any comments about why Quark didn't carbonize v. 5.0? That seems to me to be a major flaw in their latest update--one that many critics of OS X are reading as a lack of confidence on their part concerning the future of OS X.

[Andrew LaGow]

Quark claims they didn't carbonize Xpress because they received the APIs too late in the development process to do it. I've heard they're promising a carbon version of Xpress later this year. Yeah, right.

There are so many reasons I'm fed up with QuarkXpress. There are also a few very compelling reasons to stick with it. I'll sort of just list my personal likes and dislikes:

Reasons I'm fed up with QuarkXpress:
1) They hate their customers
2) Pricing is outrageous (see above)
3) Lousy PDF workflow integration
4) Version 4.1 doesn't work well in Classic, IMO
5) Whatever excuse they have, the fact remains QuarkXpress 5.0 is not OS X native

Reasons I like QuarkXpress:
1) Huge installed base--when I want to hire a freelancer, I don;t have to worry about training, just design or production skills
2) I've been using it for 12 years and know it so well I don't have to think when I'm using it

Reasons I've chosen InDesign over QuarkXpress:
1) Pricing--the InDesign 2.0 upgrade was $150; the Quark 5.0 upgrade was $300.
2) Feature set--InDesign's type rendering engine is vastly superior to Xpress's, transparency opens up new design possibilities and InDesign's table editor is much better than Quark's. InDesign can also import Illustrator 10 files natively, so all transparency options are kept. Cool.
3) InDesign's PDF workflow tools are miles above Xpress. Acrobat Distiller is not required--you can simply export natively to PDF--very nice, a big time saver.
4) InDesign is OS X native--the less I have to deal with Classic the happier I am.

I've been having trouble adapting to the new keyboard commands for InDesign. It has an option to use QuarkXpress 4.0's key commands, but I want to make a clean break. It hasn't been easy. In spite of that, I've been able to work without major slowdowns to the process.

Andy

[Dr.Evil]

since it probably violates my non-defamation clause. I don't recall how long that particular item is in effect after being laid off.

I worked for Quark on a different product from XPress, but from what I understood, the reason they haven't Carbonized XPress 5.0 is because they couldn't afford to delay 5.0. The time to market would have doubled. In order to achieve cross-platform development, Quark has an entire set of fairly ancient UI libraries to mediate Win32 vs. MacOS. All of those libraries have to be Carbonized and tested on all three platforms. What I don't think they realized is that until it's Carbonized, InDesign's going to continue making inroads.

Quark's a company in trouble, or at least thinks they are - they've laid off just about every engineer in the U.S. that wasn't working on XPress, they're running a skeleton maintenance crew in India on all their products, they've drastically cut their support and QA staffs. Even so, they're treating their remaining employees like dirt. As each new product has reached a release, they've laid off the majority of the team, aside from one or two engineers in India for bugfixing at a glacier's pace. The XPress team was promised bonuses for working nights and weekends on unpaid overtime to get 5.0 to beta. As soon as it was there, management told the team they'd have to wait until it shipped. I haven't heard, but it wouldn't have surprised me if instead of bonuses they all got pink slips.

Keep in mind that Quark is privately held, so there's no stock price to keep high with frivolous layoffs. I have no opinion on the technical merits of each product - I never worked on page-layout software. I just know that if you want a product with top-notch support and continuing development (patches, etc.) I woudn't look to Quark. Personally, I'd just as soon see Adobe smash them completely, since the upper management has so little regard for the people that make their money for them.

[Andrew LaGow]

It's so interesting to me that all the wackiness at Quark is happening post Tim Gill. I met the man several years ago at Seybold and was extremely impressed with his approachability and candor. He left Quark last year, I think, and while I can't be sure if these events are related, it seems Quark hasn't been the same company since.

It's funny. Many years ago I used to dream about Tim taking Quark public, because I wanted to sink all my life savings into that company, so fervent was my belief. And now here I am, abandoning them because they simply do not have their act together. Their pricing model for Xpress is simply, well, outrageous. I'm watching for the whoilesale corporate defections here in NYC. I know of more than one company that has been very upset with Quark for years...now they have a real alternative in InDesign 2.0, not some ridiculous has-been like PageMaker.

Speaking of PageMaker (and I'll digress from topic a tad), one of the reasons I take all the Mac magazines with a major grain of salt these days is that for years every time Aldus or Adobe would come out with another version of PageMaker, they would all run cover stories with headlines like: PageMaker 5.0: the Quark-Killer?"

As if! Pagemaker died as official competition to Quark in 1992--possibly before then. Anybody in the industry knew that, with the exception of a few holdouts in the Seattle area, as near as I could tell. It took all those dopey magazines years to get off that train. Perhaps it contributed to newsstand sales from people who didn't know any better...

Quark--and QuarkXpress--was great once.

Andy

[carrollr]

Quark is on the ropes. People are chomping at the bit to use OS X, and if Quark only runs in OS 9 (and not perfectly at that,) people will seriously think about switching to InDesign. This doesn't even account for the superior feature set, integration with other OS X apps or the fact that Adobe actually has a staff on hand to make sure your questions are answered, your problems resolved. Quark couldn't be bothered to listen to their users.
I was for many years a huge Quark advocate. You could drop just about anything into a Quark page and get reliable output. Then version 4 came and turned everything upside down.
I work in a major ad agency, and we will no longer be using Quark. The cost/benefit is clear, and we are commited to making InDesign our new page layout program.

[JayBee]

Poor for Quark, but good for OS X, no?

Clearly, OS X can now be the "feature breaker" for a lot of well established apps. Okay, so I'm on an OS X site, and the opinions will be a little baised, but look at the two biggies recently - XPress and PS 7.

Even the PC magazines have been (positively) talking about PS 7 as "the OS X upgrade", while most Mac magazines (and critics AND USERS) have been perfectly willing to overlook the relatively poor feature bumps because they now get to throw away one of the final reasons for sticking with OS 9 at work.

And then XPress comes out, and the reviews treat it like it's a point release. Features here and features there, but no OS X, so no dice.

I must admit it's a nice situation to be in, when I flick through the MacWorld reviews, and practically all the screenshots feature traffic-lighted windows. Then I see XPress in clunky grey, and suddenly it looks like some shareware review.

Bad move, Quark ...

[meancode]

hi,

i just recently saw a die-har XPress user just go goo-goo over InDesign 2. and i think thats the general effect. they go goo-goo, but are afraid to change. they are afreaid b/c not all service shops dont have InDesign to print there external stuff.

Adobe has to convince the world that OpenType is the way to go, and convince more vendors to use InDesign, and they have it made. and yea, i believe the longer Quark 5 is still not carbonized, the more inroads Adobe will make.

[Andrew LaGow]

I'm one of those former Quark monks and I too went goo-goo over InDesign.

Well maybe not "goo-goo."

Anyway, here I am using InDesign and I simply don't care if pre-press can output a native ID document because I know I have PDF at my fingertips. It's so perfectly integrated into InDesign and PDF is where this industry is headed, like it or not.

As an aside, I'm not sure I particularly like the fact that the industry is indeed switching to PDF as an output format. The reason: it puts PCs on an equal footing with the Mac at pre-press. This is not good for Apple, I think.

Andy

[snoogans37]

I go to Pratt. As a college student studying Graphic Design, I've been being taught Quark in my classrooms. But all the while one of my teachers has been talking about how Quark really hasn't drasticly changed for the better in years, he also majorly talks about how great InDesign is.

I've only been a Mac user for a little over a year and a half now... so i've been running OSX almost the whole time and running a 9 app doesn't really appeal to me, especially given that i have a dual processor G4 and I want things to take advantage of that.

I see Quark going down and fast... what scares me though is in the coming years I'm going to be coming into a job market where everything is switching over to InDesign and I'm not going to have experience with it other then the casual stuff that i might have seeked out myself. In otherwords i'm going to have to train myself, but given my experience with quark and the other adobe apps... I should be alright... i hope.

(on a side note I'm sorry for my atrocious grammer here. it's really late)

[edlake]

I'm in the printing/prepress world. There are no designers here. Nearly everything we do is printed through Quark. In fact, with only a couple of exceptions, all our Macs are running 9.x. I believe that is SOP for most shops

I don't think the situation will change for a while. Probably for at least a year or two. One reason is the abundance of older hardware which is still very useable. Apple makes good hardware. If this were a PC shop, most of the computers would be obsolete. The other is the many, many utilities, Quark extensions and printer drivers that don't run in OS X.

As far as InDesign is concerned, we have it but never use it. I don't know when the last ID job came in.

I believe that Quark may be shooting them selves in the foot, but it seems that they have lots of feet to shoot.

[BuddahBobb]

hola, another designer here

basically this is going to be a different tail for the two sides of the design/print industry

most printers arent gonna move to indesign, and most designers (at least freelance and ones who arent directly connected to a printer) are gonna move to indesign

id is plain and simple a better program for designing, but isnt nearly as good when it comes to printing and the such, i have a feeling adobe is still working hard on improving id as we speak, where i am not too confident that quark is doing anything at all

most people in the industry are still using os9, i am trying to totally go over to osx just because i like using new os's ;) so far i have been slowly getting rid of using quark, every new project i do in id, every old project that needs updated, depending on what it is i try to convert over to id, if it doesnt go over then i continue with quark until it needs a total over haul and then i will do it in id

i think as far as graphic designers go, id is gonna take over fast... pre press and inhouse quark is gonna stay around for a while and eventually going to die when adobe further improves its product

[BuddahBobb]

btw, i send pdf's to printers now... lot less files to work with, i have had much less problems sending pdf's as opposed to quarks pdfs or even native files... pdf is the way of the future :)

[snoogans37]

yes pdf rocks... but if that type lawsuit doesn't get settled it's gonna be a big problem.. i also have some problems with how it renders certain fonts and colors... but by and large it is the way of the future.. and with that on Adobe's side i really think they have the market cournered enough to bring down quark long run

[micE]

I'm in the printing/prepress world. There are no designers here. Nearly everything we do is printed through Quark. In fact, with only a couple of exceptions, all our Macs are running 9.x. I believe that is SOP for most shops

I don't think the situation will change for a while. Probably for at least a year or two. One reason is the abundance of older hardware which is still very useable. Apple makes good hardware. If this were a PC shop, most of the computers would be obsolete. The other is the many, many utilities, Quark extensions and printer drivers that don't run in OS X.

As far as InDesign is concerned, we have it but never use it. I don't know when the last ID job came in.

I believe that Quark may be shooting them selves in the foot, but it seems that they have lots of feet to shoot.
I am also in the printing pre pres world, at a small printing company and using Quark 4. I love it for its simplicity of use.
We are in effect a service bureau printing many jobs supplied to us from Graphic Designers and Marketing Companies. as well as producing our own artwork. We are running Mac G4s with OS X.
We have installed InDesign CS at the request of a major client and I can see that it has the potential to compleately take over from QuarkXpress, but not for the reason that it is a better product for producing printing files.
Rather it has more to do with economics. Increasingly more and more artwork and printing is being controled by Graphic Designers, most small comercial printers employ at least one.
Not many Graphic Design Uni Students can afford to pay for Quark. So the whole Creative Suit package at accademic prices is what they are going to use.