OS 9-booting Macs available in 2003, Quark tells users
By Nick dePlume, Publisher and Editor in Chief
December 11, 2002 - Quark Inc. is telephoning a number of publishing customers worldwide, assuring them that even though new Mac models will boot only into Mac OS X beginning next
year, XPress users will still be able to buy OS 9-booting hardware. This comes amid concerns about the slipping release date for QuarkXPress 6 for Mac OS X, set to ship in the latter part of next year.
Think Secret has spoken with several Quark customers who have been contacted by the company in recent days. One large client was told by Quark that the company had negotiated with Apple to ensure that XPress users would be able to buy new Mac OS 9-bootable Macs until the middle of next year.
Another user provided a similar report. According to this customer, a Quark representative called to say that Apple would continue to sell the current G4s to XPress customers next year, even if new hardware is released that won't boot into OS 9. "Yeah, I really want to buy yesterday's Mac so I can run theirapp," the user said sarcastically.
The first reports of Quark's communication came Tuesday in a letter posted to MacInTouch, also sent to Think Secret. This reader made even bolder claims, saying that Quark told him that Apple had agreed to delay its entire OS X-only booting policy until June 2003. Whether this is what the user was truly told by Quark or is an exaggeration of what was reported by the other clients we spoke to is anyone's guess.
Several of the Quark clients called were attendees of a conference held by Quark in New York last month, in which CEO Fred Ebrahimi disparaged the Mac platform and struck back at critics of Quark's sluggish OS X pace. "The Mac platform is shrinking" and users dissatisfied with Quark's Mac efforts should "switch to something else," he told the assembled guests, most of whom were shocked by his comments and left the session early. When news of Ebrahimi's remarks leaked, Quark's public relations department addressed the subject in an email, but the company didn't dispute that the quotes were true, and in fact supported Ebrahimi's claim that fewer publishers are purchasing Macs. "With respect to Mac OS, our market data indicates that fewer publishers are purchasing Macs," said Quark communications manager Glen Turpin, "and more of our Mac-using customers are considering switching to Windows." These recent calls to attendees may be some form of damage control.
The answers to the real questions are less clear. Quark is definitely telling its users that XPress customers will be able to purchase Mac OS 9-booting hardware in 2003, but is this true, and has the company finalized these plans with Apple? If so, how would such a purchase program be administered? While Quark contacts say that the two companies discussed such matters, there is no indication that Apple agreed to these concessions.
This recent addition to the ongoing soap opera between Apple and Quark is nothing new. Over the years, both sides have had a rocky relationship, with Quark often feeling Apple has not given them enough credit or support for maintaining much of Apple's marketshare in the prepress business. As for Apple, it appears they never know exactly where they stand with Quark week-to-week. At a meeting of Apple Specialist dealers back in May, a top executive of Apple's developer relations department showed his frustration with Quark by saying, "Quark is the most difficult company to work with of any of our developers. You never know what mood they'll be in from one day to the next."
If mac's suck and no one uses macs for publishing, why care about getting Apple to wait until July to kill off 9? Sounds like a lot to ask for from a company that doesn't seem interested in macs.
It may be your reality, but it isn't mine. maybe when XI comes along we'll get some of that Mac ease of use and ease of maintenance back - until then it's just a bastard OS.
I've always been inclined to hate Quark because of that God-awful interface, failure to adopt new technologies and UI tools like drag and drop (they still haven't done it ten years later!), </strong><hr></blockquote>
Foul! XPress was amongst the first and only applications to adopt "publish and subscribe" tech from System 7.0. XPress does support drag and drop - what you mean (probably) is that it doesn't support drag and drop between applications like Adobe's apps do.
Guess what, that's because Adobe doesn't share the API to enable others to do this.
XPress also supports a special kind of drag and drop where highlighted text can be dragged to another insertion point.
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>...horrible copy-protection system (ADB dongles!?), and non-standard dialog boxes, interface elements and key combinations across the board.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The copy protection scheme is a bit of a weird thing - did you know that applies in all markets except the UK and US? That's right, UK and US versions of XPress are not dongle protected - though Passport versions are.
These dongles are available as USB and ADB versions - you weren' implying just ADB were you?
Non-standard? IMO XPress sticks to the Mac standards as well as anything else - I don't have problems with the interface, in fact I kind of like the fact that it hasn't changed that much in ten years. This contrasts with the Adobe fiasco, where they seem to want to change the whole thing 'round every couple of versions.
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>Up until recently, most newspapers were laid out in Atex and other text only terminal systems.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That may be true in Hong Kong, but it's certainly not true in Europe and the US - most newspapers have been focused around XPress for at least ten years.
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>I've had the privelige of doing non-wysiwyg numeric kerning, coding ligature entry for headline effects and other obscure things on an Atex terminal, and sometimes Quark seems more like Atex than what a Mac program should be.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Why do you think that is? Because XPress is first and foremost a typesetting application, not a design application.
One of the reasons I like XPress over InDesign is because the text manipulation control, from the keyboard, is much better. You don't need to go to a dialogue box or use the mouse to kern by 1 unit, you can do it directly from the keyboard. Similarly with images, scaling/positioning can be achieved directly from the keyboard.
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>Granted it's wysiwyg (mostly) but you still have to fuss with numbers and you have limited control over what you can and cannot do.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not getting it - what is different in that respect to InDesign, Illustrator or Freehand?
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>That said, Quark is indeed instant, and has the fastest and most dependable printing system on the platform. I can see why the "Quark, not Mac" users are hesitant to change.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think it's production people that don't want to change, because the alternatives are not there yet. InDesign does not have the functionality that XPress has - with XPress you can access virtually any dialogue box with a keystroke, or better, change the value without going to a dialogue at all - that speeds production, and that's all that counts.
<strong>I'm sure it won't (4.11 will), but that doesn't mean it isn't full of legacy code that runs in the PPC's 68k emulation. But I guess if it's still fast (and it is), that doesn't really make a difference. It just makes the app more difficult to update.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not sure that it's any different to Freehand, Illustrator or Photoshop in that respect - all of which must have a lot of legacy code in them.
I'm also not really sure what 68k code would be in there - the apps are compiled for PPC only these days (rather than fat binary), which means no 68k code is compiled. The underlying C++ is going to be processor agnostic.
<strong>If mac's suck and no one uses macs for publishing, why care about getting Apple to wait until July to kill off 9? Sounds like a lot to ask for from a company that doesn't seem interested in macs.</strong><hr></blockquote>
!?!?!?
Maybe because Macs don't suck and lots of people do use Macs in publishing?
[quote]sCreeD:
<strong>If I were Steve, I'd bundle PowerMacs with Indesign at a 30% discount and put a metaphorical bullet through Quark's brains..</strong><hr></blockquote>
You may have noticed that Apple and Adobe have a joint promotion in the US, whereby all PowerMacs are bundled with a copy of InDesign - for free.
I think this says more about Adobe's ability to *sell* InDesign than anything else.
Or Apple's faith in Quark!</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not sure why Apple would give away copies of ID because it lacks faith in Quark delivering an X native version. If Quark fails, Adobe gets the customers anyway.
I'm not sure why Apple would give away copies of ID because it lacks faith in Quark delivering an X native version. If Quark fails, Adobe gets the customers anyway.
No. If publishing companies want new machines in the face of OS X only booting they can either:
1. Drop Quark.
2. Switch to Windows.
3. Wait for Quark to get their ass together.
Apple and Adobe wanted to make the decision a little easier for companies who are hesitant to try switching to InDesign.</strong><hr></blockquote>
These are not easy things to do for an established company. Books come in for minor corrections sometimes yearly, and major revisions after 3-4 years. Its not always that easy, or stable to "upgrade" these documents to a newer version of Quark, let alone InDesign. Where I work we have some jobs that we are going back to Quark 3.32 still... Then there are custome workflow solutions that many publishing companies have. They are researching XML workflows right now, but from what I have seen neither Quarks or Adobe's solutions are ready for prime time. The company that can come up with a production friendly (ie. does not create twice as much work to do the job) XML workflow will probably win the war in the end. Adobe has a good product, though it is a better design tool than production tool (It is very slow when doing long, art heavy documents, and due to its local pdf "flattening" at print does not support OPI workflows, which can add a LOT of time to production and proofing). Quark is the established jaugernaut, and is more production friendly but lacks some of the bells and wistles, and has a less elegent pdf integration (which I dont see as a problem, print to file and distill for the RIP your going to use). Both have their uses, strengths, and weaknesses.
Also it costs a lot of money for a company to simply switch platforms en-mass, which due to font and file problems that envariably arise in the cross platform publishing solutions that I have seen. I'm sure that prepress workers could tell you true horror stories on this subject. Beside the cost, this is one of the real reasons for a slow migration of publishing to OS X, stability and compatability needs to be tested before a whole scale migration is made. Its a little hard for a large company to idle large parts of its buisness for a week in these economic conditions. Then there is also the hidden incompatabilities which might not crop up till the end of a job when you are sending it to the RIP.
No, quark for windows gets the customers.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And that's an even worse scenario. If that starts happening then Apple stands to lose a good share of its market - because people will just switch if they have to.
A bit of a nightmare scenario in the quote below, from MacUser:
[quote]
MacUser has discovered that Quark has confirmed this [later intro of OS X only booting] to UK publishing companies and that the decision followed a meeting between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Quark CEO Fred Ebrahimi.
...
Apple may have made this apparent concession to Quark because it already knows that it has no major hardware upgrades in the pipeline, particularly of the professional Power Mac models. Any plans to upgrade the consumer range should not affect XPress users.
Then why do we care if the new machines are capable of booting into Mac OS 9 wrt Quark?
Steve did _NOT_ declare the death of Classic. Yet. Classic, being a sort of virtual machine, is easier to keep running when the underlying hardware changes than a full Mac OS 9 boot-ability would be.
Then why do we care if the new machines are capable of booting into Mac OS 9 wrt Quark?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Because networking and printing stuff is broken in Classic (or X, take your choice). Example, it's possible to have a server disk mounted on your X desktop, but for Classic apps not to be able to see it.
Because networking and printing stuff is broken in Classic (or X, take your choice). Example, it's possible to have a server disk mounted on your X desktop, but for Classic apps not to be able to see it.
Not really a good scenario.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This could be fixed in the Classic/OS X software, and should be. If it is then there shouldnt be a problem switching to OS X, unless it is monitary.
Quark is the most stagnant software company in the market. QuarkXPress 5 (21st century already!) is not even fully Appearance-savvy, and you dare to speak of Carbonized versions! <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> It does not support ATSUI, Text Encoding Converter and none of Mac OS technologies which exist for at least 3 to 5 years. Yes, version 5 can handle Navigation Services after all, only 2 years since introduction of Mac OS X!
The truth is, QuarkXPress 3 was a great piece of software when Mac OS was extremely minimalistic. It was simple the best. It was created by some brilliant guys (full AppleScript support and object-oriented nature). But those clever guys have either gone somewhere else or gone mad or maybe even got eliminated for the sake of intellectual property safety. No one really knows what's going on inside Quark, I just guess it's nothing good. Instead of carbonizing their flagship product, which earned them billions, they add HTML editing features and printing as 'composite RGB'. Prepress bureaus are happy.
Another great example of american PR (I mean the pure art of PR to excuse oneself and blame the rest of the world for one's faults, american not because it's typical of USA but because I think it's an american invention - anyway, don't take it too hard) is to blame Apple for slow development at Quark. Just listen to what they say: we currently have dumb software engineers and, to be honest, don't even pay them anything; they don't do anything and we doubt they can. This, due to our enormous user base, prevents some 200 000 Mac users from switching to Mac OS X. And thank God, we here at Quark believe. Mac OS X is crap. Mac users should switch to Windows. You know what? Mac users are switching to Windows as we force them to. So Mac market share shrinks, and when it does, why support Macs at all?
I hope Bill Gates does not pay Quark to do that, but that cynical way to kill another platform is very much like Microsoft.
I can't see Steve Jobs embracing such an attitude; and the only reason for this rumour to be true is that Apple does not lose anything:
1) Apple cannot introduce new PowerMacs in January.
2) Apple will introduce new PowerMacs in January, but will keep selling current ones as well.
3) Apple will introduce new PowerMacs in January and provide OS 9 enablers for them.
This could be fixed in the Classic/OS X software, and should be. If it is then there shouldnt be a problem switching to OS X, unless it is monitary.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You miss the point, it's Classic/X that's broken, not the software (because the software works in 9.x).
The "switch" issue is absolutely monetary - but not in the way you think - ie paying for a new OS and some upgrades is a minor issue. The major issue is that "it just works", and, unfortunately, MacOS X does not "just work".
Apple will offer some configurations of eMac, iMac G3 and iBook which boot OS 9 until June 2003 (I'm guessing the low end models).
Whoop-de-do. I never expected that Apple would switch all hardware at the same time.
Also, I VERY MUCH doubt that this is because of Quark. Apple would rather Quark was dead and buried. The fact is, many people using low-end machines don't have the money to buy new computers and new software at the same time.
Comments
<strong>
I don't believe there are any technical reason why Apple did this other than to gets Steve's dream moving along.</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, OSX is not Steve's dream, it's our reality.
Progmac's and Tonton's posts were quite reasonable and not too much of a tendency. Give yourself a break, please!
[ 12-11-2002: Message edited by: Quick ]</p>
OS 9-booting Macs available in 2003, Quark tells users
By Nick dePlume, Publisher and Editor in Chief
December 11, 2002 - Quark Inc. is telephoning a number of publishing customers worldwide, assuring them that even though new Mac models will boot only into Mac OS X beginning next
year, XPress users will still be able to buy OS 9-booting hardware. This comes amid concerns about the slipping release date for QuarkXPress 6 for Mac OS X, set to ship in the latter part of next year.
Think Secret has spoken with several Quark customers who have been contacted by the company in recent days. One large client was told by Quark that the company had negotiated with Apple to ensure that XPress users would be able to buy new Mac OS 9-bootable Macs until the middle of next year.
Another user provided a similar report. According to this customer, a Quark representative called to say that Apple would continue to sell the current G4s to XPress customers next year, even if new hardware is released that won't boot into OS 9. "Yeah, I really want to buy yesterday's Mac so I can run theirapp," the user said sarcastically.
The first reports of Quark's communication came Tuesday in a letter posted to MacInTouch, also sent to Think Secret. This reader made even bolder claims, saying that Quark told him that Apple had agreed to delay its entire OS X-only booting policy until June 2003. Whether this is what the user was truly told by Quark or is an exaggeration of what was reported by the other clients we spoke to is anyone's guess.
Several of the Quark clients called were attendees of a conference held by Quark in New York last month, in which CEO Fred Ebrahimi disparaged the Mac platform and struck back at critics of Quark's sluggish OS X pace. "The Mac platform is shrinking" and users dissatisfied with Quark's Mac efforts should "switch to something else," he told the assembled guests, most of whom were shocked by his comments and left the session early. When news of Ebrahimi's remarks leaked, Quark's public relations department addressed the subject in an email, but the company didn't dispute that the quotes were true, and in fact supported Ebrahimi's claim that fewer publishers are purchasing Macs. "With respect to Mac OS, our market data indicates that fewer publishers are purchasing Macs," said Quark communications manager Glen Turpin, "and more of our Mac-using customers are considering switching to Windows." These recent calls to attendees may be some form of damage control.
The answers to the real questions are less clear. Quark is definitely telling its users that XPress customers will be able to purchase Mac OS 9-booting hardware in 2003, but is this true, and has the company finalized these plans with Apple? If so, how would such a purchase program be administered? While Quark contacts say that the two companies discussed such matters, there is no indication that Apple agreed to these concessions.
This recent addition to the ongoing soap opera between Apple and Quark is nothing new. Over the years, both sides have had a rocky relationship, with Quark often feeling Apple has not given them enough credit or support for maintaining much of Apple's marketshare in the prepress business. As for Apple, it appears they never know exactly where they stand with Quark week-to-week. At a meeting of Apple Specialist dealers back in May, a top executive of Apple's developer relations department showed his frustration with Quark by saying, "Quark is the most difficult company to work with of any of our developers. You never know what mood they'll be in from one day to the next."
[ 12-12-2002: Message edited by: Stratosfear ]
[ 12-12-2002: Message edited by: Stratosfear ]</p>
If I were Steve, I'd bundle PowerMacs with Indesign at a 30% discount and put a metaphorical bullet through Quark's brains.
Why tolerate such an insufferable pillock!?
Steve openly harassed Adobe for a bit and look at all the OS X goodness.
Screed
<strong>
No, OSX is not Steve's dream, it's our reality.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
It may be your reality, but it isn't mine. maybe when XI comes along we'll get some of that Mac ease of use and ease of maintenance back - until then it's just a bastard OS.
<strong>
I've always been inclined to hate Quark because of that God-awful interface, failure to adopt new technologies and UI tools like drag and drop (they still haven't done it ten years later!), </strong><hr></blockquote>
Foul! XPress was amongst the first and only applications to adopt "publish and subscribe" tech from System 7.0. XPress does support drag and drop - what you mean (probably) is that it doesn't support drag and drop between applications like Adobe's apps do.
Guess what, that's because Adobe doesn't share the API to enable others to do this.
XPress also supports a special kind of drag and drop where highlighted text can be dragged to another insertion point.
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>...horrible copy-protection system (ADB dongles!?), and non-standard dialog boxes, interface elements and key combinations across the board.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The copy protection scheme is a bit of a weird thing - did you know that applies in all markets except the UK and US? That's right, UK and US versions of XPress are not dongle protected - though Passport versions are.
These dongles are available as USB and ADB versions - you weren' implying just ADB were you?
Non-standard? IMO XPress sticks to the Mac standards as well as anything else - I don't have problems with the interface, in fact I kind of like the fact that it hasn't changed that much in ten years. This contrasts with the Adobe fiasco, where they seem to want to change the whole thing 'round every couple of versions.
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>Up until recently, most newspapers were laid out in Atex and other text only terminal systems.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That may be true in Hong Kong, but it's certainly not true in Europe and the US - most newspapers have been focused around XPress for at least ten years.
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>I've had the privelige of doing non-wysiwyg numeric kerning, coding ligature entry for headline effects and other obscure things on an Atex terminal, and sometimes Quark seems more like Atex than what a Mac program should be.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Why do you think that is? Because XPress is first and foremost a typesetting application, not a design application.
One of the reasons I like XPress over InDesign is because the text manipulation control, from the keyboard, is much better. You don't need to go to a dialogue box or use the mouse to kern by 1 unit, you can do it directly from the keyboard. Similarly with images, scaling/positioning can be achieved directly from the keyboard.
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>Granted it's wysiwyg (mostly) but you still have to fuss with numbers and you have limited control over what you can and cannot do.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not getting it - what is different in that respect to InDesign, Illustrator or Freehand?
[quote]Originally posted by tonton:
<strong>That said, Quark is indeed instant, and has the fastest and most dependable printing system on the platform. I can see why the "Quark, not Mac" users are hesitant to change.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think it's production people that don't want to change, because the alternatives are not there yet. InDesign does not have the functionality that XPress has - with XPress you can access virtually any dialogue box with a keystroke, or better, change the value without going to a dialogue at all - that speeds production, and that's all that counts.
<strong>I'm sure it won't (4.11 will), but that doesn't mean it isn't full of legacy code that runs in the PPC's 68k emulation. But I guess if it's still fast (and it is), that doesn't really make a difference. It just makes the app more difficult to update.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not sure that it's any different to Freehand, Illustrator or Photoshop in that respect - all of which must have a lot of legacy code in them.
I'm also not really sure what 68k code would be in there - the apps are compiled for PPC only these days (rather than fat binary), which means no 68k code is compiled. The underlying C++ is going to be processor agnostic.
<strong>If mac's suck and no one uses macs for publishing, why care about getting Apple to wait until July to kill off 9? Sounds like a lot to ask for from a company that doesn't seem interested in macs.</strong><hr></blockquote>
!?!?!?
Maybe because Macs don't suck and lots of people do use Macs in publishing?
[quote]sCreeD:
<strong>If I were Steve, I'd bundle PowerMacs with Indesign at a 30% discount and put a metaphorical bullet through Quark's brains..</strong><hr></blockquote>
You may have noticed that Apple and Adobe have a joint promotion in the US, whereby all PowerMacs are bundled with a copy of InDesign - for free.
I think this says more about Adobe's ability to *sell* InDesign than anything else.
<strong>I think this says more about Adobe's ability to *sell* InDesign than anything else.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Or Apple's faith in Quark!
<strong>
Or Apple's faith in Quark!</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not sure why Apple would give away copies of ID because it lacks faith in Quark delivering an X native version. If Quark fails, Adobe gets the customers anyway.
No?
<strong>
I'm not sure why Apple would give away copies of ID because it lacks faith in Quark delivering an X native version. If Quark fails, Adobe gets the customers anyway.
No?</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, quark for windows gets the customers.
<strong>
No. If publishing companies want new machines in the face of OS X only booting they can either:
1. Drop Quark.
2. Switch to Windows.
3. Wait for Quark to get their ass together.
Apple and Adobe wanted to make the decision a little easier for companies who are hesitant to try switching to InDesign.</strong><hr></blockquote>
These are not easy things to do for an established company. Books come in for minor corrections sometimes yearly, and major revisions after 3-4 years. Its not always that easy, or stable to "upgrade" these documents to a newer version of Quark, let alone InDesign. Where I work we have some jobs that we are going back to Quark 3.32 still... Then there are custome workflow solutions that many publishing companies have. They are researching XML workflows right now, but from what I have seen neither Quarks or Adobe's solutions are ready for prime time. The company that can come up with a production friendly (ie. does not create twice as much work to do the job) XML workflow will probably win the war in the end. Adobe has a good product, though it is a better design tool than production tool (It is very slow when doing long, art heavy documents, and due to its local pdf "flattening" at print does not support OPI workflows, which can add a LOT of time to production and proofing). Quark is the established jaugernaut, and is more production friendly but lacks some of the bells and wistles, and has a less elegent pdf integration (which I dont see as a problem, print to file and distill for the RIP your going to use). Both have their uses, strengths, and weaknesses.
Also it costs a lot of money for a company to simply switch platforms en-mass, which due to font and file problems that envariably arise in the cross platform publishing solutions that I have seen. I'm sure that prepress workers could tell you true horror stories on this subject. Beside the cost, this is one of the real reasons for a slow migration of publishing to OS X, stability and compatability needs to be tested before a whole scale migration is made. Its a little hard for a large company to idle large parts of its buisness for a week in these economic conditions. Then there is also the hidden incompatabilities which might not crop up till the end of a job when you are sending it to the RIP.
[ 12-12-2002: Message edited by: @homenow ]</p>
<strong>
No, quark for windows gets the customers.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And that's an even worse scenario. If that starts happening then Apple stands to lose a good share of its market - because people will just switch if they have to.
[ 12-12-2002: Message edited by: Clive ]</p>
[quote]
MacUser has discovered that Quark has confirmed this [later intro of OS X only booting] to UK publishing companies and that the decision followed a meeting between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Quark CEO Fred Ebrahimi.
...
Apple may have made this apparent concession to Quark because it already knows that it has no major hardware upgrades in the pipeline, particularly of the professional Power Mac models. Any plans to upgrade the consumer range should not affect XPress users.
Both Apple and Quark have declined to comment.
<hr></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.macuser.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=36332"; target="_blank">http://www.macuser.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=36332</a>;
The aricle quotes and cites think Secret, but they appear to have at least approached Apple and Quark UK to get feedback.
No new Macs until at least June?
[ 12-12-2002: Message edited by: Clive ]</p>
Then why do we care if the new machines are capable of booting into Mac OS 9 wrt Quark?
Steve did _NOT_ declare the death of Classic. Yet. Classic, being a sort of virtual machine, is easier to keep running when the underlying hardware changes than a full Mac OS 9 boot-ability would be.
<strong>Quark runs inside Classic ok, yes?
Then why do we care if the new machines are capable of booting into Mac OS 9 wrt Quark?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Because networking and printing stuff is broken in Classic (or X, take your choice). Example, it's possible to have a server disk mounted on your X desktop, but for Classic apps not to be able to see it.
Not really a good scenario.
<strong>
Because networking and printing stuff is broken in Classic (or X, take your choice). Example, it's possible to have a server disk mounted on your X desktop, but for Classic apps not to be able to see it.
Not really a good scenario.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This could be fixed in the Classic/OS X software, and should be. If it is then there shouldnt be a problem switching to OS X, unless it is monitary.
The truth is, QuarkXPress 3 was a great piece of software when Mac OS was extremely minimalistic. It was simple the best. It was created by some brilliant guys (full AppleScript support and object-oriented nature). But those clever guys have either gone somewhere else or gone mad or maybe even got eliminated for the sake of intellectual property safety. No one really knows what's going on inside Quark, I just guess it's nothing good. Instead of carbonizing their flagship product, which earned them billions, they add HTML editing features and printing as 'composite RGB'. Prepress bureaus are happy.
Another great example of american PR (I mean the pure art of PR to excuse oneself and blame the rest of the world for one's faults, american not because it's typical of USA but because I think it's an american invention - anyway, don't take it too hard) is to blame Apple for slow development at Quark. Just listen to what they say: we currently have dumb software engineers and, to be honest, don't even pay them anything; they don't do anything and we doubt they can. This, due to our enormous user base, prevents some 200 000 Mac users from switching to Mac OS X. And thank God, we here at Quark believe. Mac OS X is crap. Mac users should switch to Windows. You know what? Mac users are switching to Windows as we force them to. So Mac market share shrinks, and when it does, why support Macs at all?
I hope Bill Gates does not pay Quark to do that, but that cynical way to kill another platform is very much like Microsoft.
I can't see Steve Jobs embracing such an attitude; and the only reason for this rumour to be true is that Apple does not lose anything:
1) Apple cannot introduce new PowerMacs in January.
2) Apple will introduce new PowerMacs in January, but will keep selling current ones as well.
3) Apple will introduce new PowerMacs in January and provide OS 9 enablers for them.
<strong>
This could be fixed in the Classic/OS X software, and should be. If it is then there shouldnt be a problem switching to OS X, unless it is monitary.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You miss the point, it's Classic/X that's broken, not the software (because the software works in 9.x).
The "switch" issue is absolutely monetary - but not in the way you think - ie paying for a new OS and some upgrades is a minor issue. The major issue is that "it just works", and, unfortunately, MacOS X does not "just work".
Whoop-de-do. I never expected that Apple would switch all hardware at the same time.
Also, I VERY MUCH doubt that this is because of Quark. Apple would rather Quark was dead and buried. The fact is, many people using low-end machines don't have the money to buy new computers and new software at the same time.
Barto
(Got an e-mail from Apple today).
[ 12-16-2002: Message edited by: Barto ]</p>