Will InDesign fade into obscurity like Quark Express (sic)? - LOCKED

InDesign won't fade into obscurity, but I, like few others here, have continued to use Quark XPress. It is now as good as--and in some ways better than--Adobe InDesign. I use both apps, and also rely heavily on Adobe Photoshop and to a lesser extent  Illustrator (although I miss FreeHand, a much more user-friendly and versatile vector application that Adobe killed). I have recommended at work that we not upgrade our CS suite with the Creative Cloud, as I am vehemently opposed to a subscription-based model for software. So I'll continue to use and upgrade Quark XPress and have to make do with Adobe CS 6.

Shawn Couglhin wrote: … Design professionals are (again) angry. They can't continue to use CS6 with it's unfixed OS incompatibles.…

Quite frankly, you've got it backwards here.

CS6 doesn't have “unfixed OS incompatibilities” but rather, Apple has chosen a route of purposely and knowingly making new OS versions that are incompatible with existing application versions. Existing OS functionality is either “deprecated” (nice word for no longer supported and if other OS feature change break that functionality, too damned bad), purposely changed, or eliminated. And that is what you see as “unfixed OS incompatibilities.” In some cases, it is in fact impossible to produce a MacOS application that will run on more than a few OS versions without having totally separate program compilation and executable modules. That is simply not feasible for Adobe or other developers of large, complex applications that must interact closely with the OS and hardware.

This is one of the major reasons why Adobe embraced the subscription model – to be able to continually provide software that will work with new OS versions, new hardware (such as the HiDPI – a.k.a. “Retina” – screens, new pointing / touch devices, etc.) without requiring users to specifically and explicitly pay for an application version upgrade to use a new OS version or even a new computer that requires the new OS version (and hardware features).

You may not like the subscription model for other reasons (and I respect that), but the OS and device compatibility issue was one that the old perpetual license model simply did not and increasingly cannot handle.

           - Dov

Quark and QXP is far from dead. As mentioned, the new 2016 version is pretty solid, quick, and add to that Quark is not only listening to its customers, but they are responding to issues as they come up quickly. They are soliciting feedback and making changes as they can.

Mike

Why did they switch? Well, Indesign offered many of the  features users had been demanding from Quark for years.

That's not why I switched—there were no features worth switching for. In the late 90s, 90% of design users were on Mac OS9 and Quark was making a reasonable bet that Apple was about to go out of business (Apple's stock bottomed out in 2003 at $6.50). It was just the wrong bet. It wasn't clear at all that OSX would survive, but our only choice was to switch to Windows or InDesign. OS9 was not an option.

Nope. I already pointed out that you cannot compare Quark (one-trick pony) with Adobe (full tool box of which InDesign is very small piece). Users angry about this business plan have been predicting doom since day one. In that time, subscription numbers have soared to more than 6 million and stock is at all-time highs based on predictions for future growth.

Adobe’s subscription licensing plan makes good sense for Adobe and for most of its customers (those that upgraded every version are actually saving money). If it doesn’t make sense to you, start shopping for alternatives. CS6 isn’t get updated and perpetual licenses aren’t coming back.

Again, those aren’t opinions…they are facts.