quark 5?!?

rokrok
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
y'know, i wanted to give them half a chance with quark 5. i really did. i bought the upgrade (using my company's money, so why not), to start kicking the tires, and be ready in case we received any quark 5 documents (yeah, right -- that's the excuse i gave, anyway).



get the delivery the next day (which, for canadian deliveries, is insanely fast)... open the box. gorgeous packaging -- though the cd is a little hidden (hint to people look for the cd - there are TWO pieces of tape to remove, on the top AND the side -- the cd is INSIDE AND BEHIND the main box).



anyway, get seated for this, but the quark 5 upgrade comes WITHOUT A MANUAL!!! not even in pdf form on the cd. not downloadable from the web site. nothing. nada. zip. zilch.



you do, however, get a beautiful printed copy of the xtension catalog to see what else you can buy to add on to quark.



i am utterly dumbfounded by this customer service incompetence. i tried to forgive lack of os x compatibility, saying it does me no good until photoshop is also os x'd.



or the fact that many of the added features are provided by xtensions i have bought or downloaded for years.



but this takes the cake.



[edit: well, folks, i finally found the documentation - still nothing printed, just pdf's... but if you're like me, wondering where the hell they are, they are in the directory Installed Items/QuarkXPress/Documents/Guides to QuarkXPress. sigh... i still hate 'em]



[ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: rok ]</p>

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    mac gurumac guru Posts: 367member
    Yet another reason I made the switch to InDesign 2.0



    Message to Quark:

    Adobe has beaten you once and for all. InDesign is does more faster and better than Quark ever has. I am still forced to use Quark for many things just because my coworkers don't wish to make the upgrade and I need to share files with them(the kinds of people afraid of a NEW app). When going from Quark to InDesign it just feels right. Everything flows, and everything just LOOKS DAMNED GOOD.

    Documentation is in HTML format and is EASILY accessed from the Help menu (what a novel idea). Too bad it's still like pulling teeth to buy a copy of Quark... for all that trouble I would expect a gilded hardbound copy of the manual.



    I'm spreading the word and have all ready diverted 10 potential Quark purchases to Adobe and ALL are VERY pleased.



    Mac Guru
  • Reply 2 of 8
    stimulistimuli Posts: 564member
    But it's not even like there was astruggle, where Adobe caught up. Quark is run by incompetent morons. They bought a company back in like 97 called mTropolis, who made a multimedia authoring app that (at the time) completely blew Director out of the water. Then they...immediately shut it down. (I have a pirated unreleased copy).



    They 0wn3d the DTP industry at one time, and by being a bunch of slack-ass mother#$%*ers, ran their lucrative business into oblivion.



    They remind me of Palm, sitting idly by doing nothing FOR YEARS while the competion (crawling at a snails pace) starts from scratch and manages (if viewed at high speed) to whip past them like a tidal wave of molasses in January.



    WTF?!! Quark can only import TIFFs?! It's a .psd world, meatheads! At least three years have gone by and it is apparent they've been sitting around 'tossing the caper' but not in the highland games sense.



    What a bunch of pathetic, idiotic, loser morons. I have no pity for them or their imminent demise.



    Edit: And the dongle thing. Way to annoy customers!And way to release ADB dongles for USB macs!



    [ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: stimuli ]</p>
  • Reply 3 of 8
    berbercarpetberbercarpet Posts: 242member
    Not to mention tha the word "Dongle" is so dirty.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    stimulistimuli Posts: 564member
    That too!



    Vulgar pigs...
  • Reply 5 of 8
    sizzle chestsizzle chest Posts: 1,133member
    I've actually been thinking of moving over to InDesign 2 lately, so I called my film shop to see if they A) could handle InDesign files, and B)had any advice about my possible change.



    They said "Yeah, we can take InDesign files just like we can take files from most software. But we think InDesign sucks!" She proceeded to tell me that they have many of the same output problems with InDesign that they've always had with Pagemaker (and I've experienced THOSE issues from my Pagemaker days, not only at this film shop but at two others).



    Are any of you others getting resistance to InDesign from pre-press and film shops? They didn't tell me not to do it, or even try to talk me out of it, but it was obvious that they thought I should try the new Quark instead.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    yeah, i've gotten the same crap from my main press place... methinks that many of these places have gotten so USED to compensating for the eccentricities and oddities of quark, that they don't know how to do anything any other way. but that's just a theory on my part...



    thankfully, i've got my company buying the upgrade for us, so it's not directly my money, but think about it... let's say you're a student fresh outta design school, or an independent contracter/freelancer. you look on the shelves, and see quark 5 (full version) for a mere $900 USD. then you turn and look at the adobe design collection, and for $1000 USD you could get adobe photoshop, illustrator, acrobat AND indesign -- all full versions.



    hmmmm... which would YOU choose???



    this seems to tell me that quark is sacrificing the small studio and independent market to adobe, trusting that those huge places like newspapers that have invested tens of thousands of dollars in quark workflow, qps or qms workflow systems, etc., cannot afford to switch horses any more.



    now that i have played with quark 5 some, i can honestly say that it should've been quark 4.5, released a year ago, for half the price. and then 5 should have been the carbonization and the full upgrade...



    [ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: rok ]</p>
  • Reply 7 of 8
    sizzle chestsizzle chest Posts: 1,133member
    I'm tempted to borrow a copy of InDesign, and present my next CD package in both Quark and InDesign files, and ask them to try to output the InDesign files first and see if there's a problem. I wonder if they're just being crybabies, or if there are actually technical reasons why output from InDesign is more problematic?
  • Reply 8 of 8
    pscatespscates Posts: 5,847member
    We're in a similar situation at my job. It's been a longtime Quark place, but I and most others can't stand Quark: the program AND the company.



    Their annoying pricing/upgrading policies take the cake. I'm in Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, etc. throughout the day, and each one feels as though it was written and refined just days ago.



    When I fire up Quark, it's like 1994 or something. I do get stuff done, but I can also get stuff done in a more friendly, modern and better-looking package.



    That's why we're slowly moving over to InDesign 2.0. We've sent out some 1 and 2 color jobs with InDesign 1.5 and have had no problems.



    We're going to be smart and migrate smoothly, making sure the other people in the production/output chain are prepared as well. But so far, we've only had one person say something bad about InDesign. And this wasn't a production or graphic person...it was a sales rep, so I'm hardly hanging on HIS word.



    He's been known to be less than accurate and truthful (okay, he's a full-of-shit blowhard...there) in the past.







    Quark, good riddance. Sit on your ass, overcharge, act like dicks on the telephone, rape you at every turn regarding upgrade fees/paths, etc.



    Screw off. I'd rather use an Adobe page layout program ANYWAY, because I'm already using their kickass photo editing, illustration, type management, PDF creation, etc. tools already.



    QuarkXPress, to be honest, always was the odd man out...
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