July 1, 1999

In Design a Quark-killer? Loyalty to Denver firm tested

Denver-based Quark’s desktop publishing software, Xpress, has long been the dominant player in its industry. Estimates put Quark’s share of the business at close to 90 percent.

Long-time competitor Adobe Systems of San Jose, Calif., is out to change that. It’s about to release its “Quark killer” product, In Design, that’s going right after Xpress, Quark’s bread and butter.

In the works for five years, In Design will replace PageMaker as Adobe’s top-of-the-line desktop publishing software.

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And that suits some users of Quark just fine.

“They (Quark) are rather unresponsive to problems in their software and in fact even ship software with known flaws in it,” says Nathan Wade, owner of Bear Mountain Graphics in Boulder. Those flaws, says Wade, “have caused all sorts of expensive problems for me and for friends of mine in the industry.”

Wade attended a seminar in Denver on June 10, sponsored by Adobe and Apple, that gave designers a glimpse of In Design. The show won over at least one convert.

“I think it’s safe to say this is the Quark slayer; it is vastly superior to Quark Xpress,” says Wade. “It has tight integration with current Adobe products, it has a typographical composing engine that’s great for those dealing with a lot of text, and the color management features in In Design are second to none.”

John Chaffee, Group Product Manager for Adobe, wants to downplay some of the hype around In Design, but says it is a significant new product.

“Customers are very excited about In Design, and they have very high expectations for it,” he says. But, he adds, “If people are thinking when they buy 1.0 we’re going to leapfrog Quark in all areas, they will be disappointed.”

Chaffee says both customer fondness for other Adobe products, like Photoshop and Illustrator, and animosity toward Quark have helped to spur enthusiasm for In Design.

“There’s very few people who have problems with Quark Xpress, the product. But they don’t like the way they’ve been treated,” says Chaffee.

As for the product itself, Chaffee says three factors make In Design superior to Xpress. First is the program’s object-oriented architecture. The core program of In Design is quite small — 1.6 megabytes — but “there’s over 100 plug-ins that come with In Design,” making it easy for users to add functionality without waiting for a entirely new version of the program.

Second, Chaffee says, is In Design’s ability to integrate with other Adobe products used in desktop publishing — Photoshop and Illustrator. With In Design in place, users will have a platform of all-Adobe products to form a end-to-end solution. “It just makes for a more seamless, smooth work flow,” says Chaffee.

He says Adobe, upon release of In Design, will sell it as a suite of products with Illustrator and Photoshop in a professional publishing platform. Currently that suite is sold with PageMaker.

Lastly, Chaffee says In Design “brings a level of functionality to the desktop in typography that hadn’t existed before in Quark or PageMaker.”

He say s the program allows for “multi-line composing,” allowing for more elegant layouts of print copy than current composing features allow. And what of customer service, a primary complaint of Quark users? Chaffee says customers will be served well by Adobe. “We’re not going to release the product until it’s stable and bug-free, which is why it’s not shipping today and won’t be shipping until later this summer.”

Chaffee adds that training materials and seminars are in place to help people make the switch to In Design. For users of Xpress, PageMaker, Photoshop or Illustrator, Adobe will offer an upgrade price of $299 for In Design.

Not everyone is eager for In Design, though. Greg Drake of Printline, a graphic design firm in Boulder, is happy with Xpress. “I don’t know why anybody would (replace Quark.)” He says he’s “never” had a problem with Quark’s customer service.

Ron Ellis, co-owner of One World Arts in Boulder, occupies the middle ground between those who love Quark and those who would leave it. “We use Quark to great effect, and don’t really have any problems with it, but it’s always nice to see something substantially improved.”

As for In Design, Ellis says “I’ll believe it when I see it. You know, you add more bells and whistles, and they’re more likely not going to work.”

As for Quark, the firm acknowledges many of their customers will at least try In Design. “It would be stupid for us to ignore what is going on over there” at Adobe, says Quark spokesperson Leslie Holben. “We’re still continuing on our prescribed course, because we feel there’s a lot to be done with Xpress in terms of making it a better production tool.”

As for customer service complaints, Holben says Quark is aware of the problem and has made changes. “We’ve changed a lot of tech support and customer service policies that are getting us to be a little more customer-friendly.”

A list of improvements Quark has made, provided by Holben, includes creation of customer service, database maintenance and customer outreach departments, competitive upgrades, and incident refunds for known bugs.

For now, though, most are in a wait-and-see mode. Abode’s Chaffee says he thinks In Design can become the dominant software in publishing in three years. He admits, though, that “this is an uphill battle, it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take time for people to migrate.”

Denver-based Quark’s desktop publishing software, Xpress, has long been the dominant player in its industry. Estimates put Quark’s share of the business at close to 90 percent.

Long-time competitor Adobe Systems of San Jose, Calif., is out to change that. It’s about to release its “Quark killer” product, In Design, that’s going right after Xpress, Quark’s bread and butter.

In the works for five years, In Design will replace PageMaker as Adobe’s top-of-the-line desktop publishing software.

And that suits some users of Quark just fine.

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