Filed under: Multimedia, Software, WWDC, Universal Binary
Quark 7 goes Universal
Despite some recent logo troubles and the move of design and ad agencies toward Adobe InDesign, Quark seems to be climbing out of the hole it dug itself with its disastrous transition to OS X. Today with version 7.1, QuarkXPress 7–first announced at MacWorld and released in May–became the first major page layout application to make the transition to Universal Binary for the Intel architecture. This move comes a full 6 months before the announced release time-frame for Adobe Creative Suite 3.
With today's announcements of upcoming Leopard technologies, it will be interesting to see what Quark has in store for us with its next version. Perhaps designers will be able to use Time Machine to go back and fix that pesky mistake they made 3 days ago. For now at least, we'll all just have to sit on our hands and wait like good little boys and girls.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
narco said 5:52PM on 8-07-2006
Oh God, here comes another debate. InDesign users: just be happy with your program, and us Quark users will be happy with ours.
Oh a separate note, I really do hope they take advantage of Time Machine. I would love to correct the mistakes I made after the magazine goes to print. That would be AWESOME.
Fishes,
narco.
Reply
ben said 6:03PM on 8-07-2006
I hate the fact that I, as a new designer, have to be familiar with what is, in my view anyway, archaic software of a time gone past. Every job I look at asks if I have experience with Quark. Why bother? For a few years there, they didn't even bother with the OS my machine was running. Why should I bother with their slowly updated, overly complicated, and mostly clunky program?
I salute them for going universal, but after dealing with a host of problems, errors, and mistakes they made in their last version, I'd be with the unwilling masses of my generation to just jump in bed with them again. I don't think I could stand another student crying to me as they lose their past few months of work because Quark decided to give them some random error code.
So, to summarize, boo to you Quark. Boo to your slow nature for updates, poor excuse for tech support, and seeming stranglehold on older designers. Boo to your lack of integration with ANY Adobe application. Boo to you.
All right. I'm done ranting.
Reply
arthurbarnhouse said 6:35PM on 8-07-2006
"Quark 7 goes Universal"
All nine of those quark users must be pretty chipper today.
Reply
Nathaniel said 6:58PM on 8-07-2006
InDesign users: just be happy with your program, and us Quark users will be happy with ours.
I can provide you with 1-800 numbers for a local abuse hotline. The first step is to admit you are a victim, and ask for help :)
Reply
darthstupid said 8:33PM on 8-07-2006
the left over users of quark will be happy to some extent but i think most quark users are annoyed at the lack of updates to the product. and most mac users have turned their back to the company and welcomed indesign with open arms since quark turned their back on mac users.
Reply
narco said 9:07PM on 8-07-2006
Dudes, seriously. Ben, that sucks that you're taught something in school, only to have to work with this archaic application hand coded by the freakin' dinosaurs in 19 hundred billion BC, but that little bit of extra knowledge actually helps in the real world.
I've been using Quark since the days when UMAX made computers running Mac OS. From 4.1 to 6.5, I've never lost a document, let alone months of work, due to some "random error." I think the answer to their problem is within your sentence -- the part about them being students.
I hear all of these so-called errors and problems, which makes me wonder what backward-ass version of Quark you people are using! The extent of my errors is the occasional CMYK .Tiff file showing up in B&W. Who cares? I'm not saying Quark TOTALLY RULZ, I'm just saying that in this business, most printers accept PDF files and it really doesn't matter what program you use.
CHILLAX, people!
Fishes,
narco.
Reply
samfish said 9:44PM on 8-07-2006
Man, I sure do wish I cared about this.
...unfortunately, Quark is all but dead.
Good riddance to that stupid piece of crap.
Reply
Joel Conrad Bechtolt said 10:20PM on 8-07-2006
I'm not a Quark apologist by any stretch of the imagination.
I don't use Quark, or InDesign, never have.
I often get caught up in the "which OS is better" debate, and lend my allegience to the Mac OS.
However, I can't agree more with Narco's observation of "CHILLAX" (A great term by the way) due to the fact that PDF is king, period.
I make my flyers and brochures and websites in Photoshop. I find Photoshop chill. To the max. Photoshop makes great PDF's.
Reply
Garrick said 11:48PM on 8-07-2006
I pay about as much attention to Quark today as Quark has paid to me over the last ten years.. none.
Reply
ben said 4:11PM on 8-08-2006
Narco, I'd just like to address a few things in your last comment. :)
First, I did learn a bit of Quark my freshman and sophomore years of school. I could never understand why it was so hard to work with. Then, one fateful day, the Quark server crashed and we had to work in InDesign. Suddenly, the world made sense. Up was up and down was down. I could import PSD files with transparency, I could use vectors easily within the program, and importing Illustrator art wasn't like trying to wrestle a 800-pound gorilla. Things made sense. This is why I use InDesign over Quark. It's easier to use, it's conducive to my workflow, and it ran on OS X way before Quark (and way better I might add).
And the deal with never losing a file? Congrats for you. For the three semesters I worked with Quark myself, I lost a number of projects simply because Quark thought the file was corrupt. No amount of finagling or fighting could fix it. Saving it as another file name or to another physical drive resulted with an ominous "we can't do that" and another nondescript error code number. So, when I was a tech at my university, it never surprised me that other students lost their work. Sure, they probably weren't all as tech-savvy as you, but they weren't intentionally destroying their own work.
Anyway, have fun sticking to Quark and I'll have fun sticking with InDesign.
Reply
Stephen Cutter said 4:48PM on 8-17-2006
Just updated one of my 2 Quark programs to Version Seven.
I use Version 6 now and save back to Ver5 for some just write to PDF for others.
I always backup as I go, so my one Bad code error I had was no big deal.
People love to snark at Quark. Use whatever program you like. I have a fair number of crashes in illustrator, but like it and photoshop (though I would not think of doing brochures with only photoshop) Quark is a professional layout program, not for evreyone. IN Design is an understandable substitute, but it is Quark or IN Design if you really care about having professional abilities so pick one and suck it up. Or be a semi-pro in layout and that is OK too.
Reply
Peter McCloud said 9:49AM on 9-02-2006
Quark 7 so far surpasses InDesign that I don't even know why you would be all aggagga about Adobe's near monopoly on the entire range of publishing...last time I checked competition was good. Go Quark, go....version 8 will release right around the time ID users will deal with all the new bugs Adobe's Universal Binary version will have when it comes out. Hey try this in InDesign...make ONE box with 40% transparent blending to 100 opaque with 100% white type and 20% transparent frame. Or try having someone else help you work on the same layout at the same time...or even 10 people...it's called parallel processing and it's in Quark as well as over 160 new features...and blazing speed in UB.
Reply