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

[TonightWeDineInHELL]

Do you remember way back when Quark acted like they owned the planet (because they kinda did) and ignored the desires of their customers? Do you remember what happened? Adobe created InDesign 1.0... it was buggy, crashed all the time, was full of problems, and everyone switched from Quark to use it.  Why did they switch? Well, Indesign offered many of the  features users had been demanding from Quark for years.  AND these same users were angry... angry at Quark, because to continue as professional designers meant they had to put up with Quark's obnoxious hey-what-other-software-are-you-gonna-use attitude.

Now, fast forward to today. Design professionals are (again) angry. They can't continue to use CS6 with it's unfixed OS incompatibles. They want a perpetual license for InDesign and don't want to pay Adobe until doomsday, just to be able to open their files. Adobe's attitude? "Hey-what-other-software-are-you-gonna-use?"  These angry customers are ripe for the picking. If a young eager software company released even a half-decent layout application (with a perpetual license) that could open .indd files, it could be game-over for InDesign.  So, what do you all think? Will InDesign fade into obscurity like Quark Express?

[BobLevine]

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.

[Barb Binder]

I'm with Bob—it's not going anywhere, thank goodness! Truthfully, I resisted the subscription model for the first year and now I wonder where I'd be without it. The subscription model offers so much more than just access to a fully supported and updated copy of InDesign and the other apps: access to Adobe's font library through Typekit (no more missing font headaches!), life-changing shared assets through Libraries, quick access to comps through Adobe Stock. And it does cost less than upgrading the perpetual licenses. As an ACI (Adobe Certified Instructor), I would get student questions on an upgrade starting the day of the new release, so I had no choice about updating.

That said, I had a lively conversation with a Quark enthusiast last month who was pretty darn excited about the new features in Quark 2015.

[BobLevine]

Quark 2016 is a very nice application. They have some very compelling features in there. I especially love convert imported objects to live objects feature. You can import an EPS or PDF file and convert it to live objects to edit.

Works very nicely.

This great news for InDesign users since it means that there is indeed competition.

[Barb Binder]

That's exactly what he was so excited about, Bob! It does sound cool, but if you archive the original docs along with the PDF, it isn't so important, at least in my little world.  

You can import an EPS or PDF file and convert it to live objects to edit.

[Rudolf Rotnase]

Well, permanent updates may sound as a good thing for people who are just using their Indesign desktop application. But if you are working with an indesign server as well, for which permanent updates are not an option, you may find yourself in a quite unhappy situation, if your desktop version was updated and the server was not. If that happens, and you are not willing to update the server as well for a bundle of dollars, the only solution is to use IDML, which renders all new document features after CS4 unuseable.

Usage of Indesign desktop applications in combination with an Indesign server is not so rare, for example in advertising agencies, to create similiar looking brochures with different products or prices periodically.

[TonightWeDineInHELL]

OK Bob. Here are some questions for you;

1. You can't compare Quark to InDesign, just because one is included in a suite??? come on Bob, that's ridiculous. They are 90% the same program. Do you really believe that just because Indesign interacts well with Abode's other products it suddenly isn't a page layout program?

2. "...subscription numbers have soared.." Yeah, I and the other professional designers I know have all purchased CC. Does this mean we are in love with Adobe? Does this mean we NOT angry at being forced into a subscription model in order to continue as professional designers? 

3. You keep saying, "Fact! Sales are great!" Do you think sales were great for Quark, just before they lost their shirts?

[BobLevine]

1. That’s not what I said, but I apologize for any confusion. You can easily compare QuarkXPress to InDesign but you can’t do so in a vacuum. I’m playing around with QXP 2016 and it is a viable competitor to InDesign on a feature basis. Also works nicely with Adobe applications. But you cannot compare Quark with Adobe. That was my point (see number 3).

2. Nobody forced you or anyone else to subscribe. Do I think everything is rosy? No. I have my complaints about some of the directions these applications are taking but it doesn’t change the facts. The business model works and you’ll see it more and more from large software vendors.

3. Again, Quark, as a company has one application, QuarkXPress. Adobe has a multitude of applications. Even if every InDesign user switched to QuarkXPress tomorrow, it wouldn’t cause a blip on Adobe’s radar.

[swaziseth]

I'd like to see what you have to say about that now that QuarkXPress 2017 is out?

[BobLevine]

I have no idea what you're talking about.

[rob day]

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.

[BobLevine]

The real key was including it in with Creative Suite. It was effectively free and Adobe made a huge push to get adoption rates higher.

Those were fun days. I miss them.

[rob day]

Can't remember when Quark finally offer OSX support—it was after 2005. We take seamless cross platform applications for granted now, but in 2000 the were very few designers on Windows.

[MW Design]

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

[BobLevine]

And for the first time in I don’t know how long there is new lynda course from Mike Rankin.

[Steve Werner]

Thanks for the cue, Bob, about Mike Rankin's new Lynda.com title, "QuarkXPress 2016 Essential Training"

I've just watched the first few chapters. As a former QuarkXPress user, I recognize the XPress way of working. (Truth in advertising: In the 2000s I co-authored a book on moving from QuarkXPress to InDesign with David Blatner.)

However, in watching those first few chapters the most infuriating thing is how many differences there are between the Mac and Windows versions. Mike is very careful to point out these differences (what's different in menus, what features are in one platform and not the other, what keyboard shortcuts are very different—a lot of them!). It would make me very crazy as a teacher to have to remember that many differences when teaching!

[BobLevine]

Yeah. I had only played with the Windows version and didn’t know about the difference until I watched that chapter, too.

[jane-e]

Steve Werner wrote:

Thanks for the cue, Bob, about Mike Rankin's new Lynda.com title, "QuarkXPress 2016 Essential Training"

...
It would make me very crazy as a teacher to have to remember that many differences when teaching!

Teaching QuarkXPress may or may not be a big issue, Steve—about a year ago, I was asked to teach a class in Quark. I stopped using it about the time 8 was released, so I asked all of my contacts as well as on the sic list. I couldn't find a single instructor in the U.S. who is still teaching Quark!!!

For anyone reading this who doesn't know about the sic list, it was so named because the software is misspelled so often. For example, see the title of this thread: "Will InDesign fade into obscurity like Quark Express (sic)?"

I will watch at least part of Rankin's title, but am mostly curious about if there is a real table feature. Thanks for the heads up.

[Steve Werner]

My last QuarkXPress class was probably about 2001 or 2002 but I'm happy to see it's still around and adding features.

[BobLevine]

This is the first version I’ve found compelling. They have a full blown export to HTML5 and the ability to convert imported objects to live objects is flat out impressive. I haven’t really played with the table tools but one feature that is there is the ability to flow text from one cell to the next.

I asked about the differences between Mac and Win and it is a work in progress though the culture at Quark seems to be that Mac apps should be Mac like and Windows apps should be Windows like. I did argue that point because so many people do work cross platform these days and the major apps such as CC and MSFT Office apps are very much alike the two platforms.

I will say this for them; they are listening and reaching out to customers. They’re very active on Facebook and Twitter and very responsive to questions. They obviously learned from their past mistakes.

[Abambo · Accepted solution]

The answer is NO! Thanks for marking the question as answered!

[Dov Isaacs]

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

[jobro1]

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.

[richardk32]

Will it fade into obscurity? No.

Are there problems with the current subscription only model? Yes.

Adobe is in its current position because two ground-shaking events happened together. 1) Adobe learned valuable lessons from Pagemaker, and built a new design application from the ground up, listening carefully to what their customers were asking of Quark, but not getting. 2) Quark not only didn't deliver, they were obnoxiously defiant about not delivering over several major, overpriced, upgrades (4, 5, AND 6). They also took their eye off the desktop ball and tried to build web design features into the core product, with an end result that by 6, QXP couldn't do DTP or web particularly well. Additionally, Quark also missed the prime opportunity to merge with Macromedia, which would have given them a suite (FreeHand, xRes, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, etc.) that would have put them way in front both in desktop and on the web.

Both these things had to happen. My shop was producing thousands of publications a year, and had a workflow built around Quark. Switching to InDesign was going to painful at best, and if QXP6 hadn't sucked as bad as QXP 4 and 5, and cost even more to upgrade to, we wouldn't have made the move.

That being said, Adobe is now acting like Quark was in 2002. The subscription model works well for large shops, with a continuing workflow. But for the rest of us, it is a constant money suck in an industry with inconsistent income flow, and a constant reminder that you are just one failed log in away from not being able to access a life's worth of work.

I would love to have some of the improvements I see in CC. But I am now a freelance designer, and I don't want them enough to commit to an irrevocable $600 a year, stop paying for a month and you're dead meat, subscription leash.

At the very least, Adobe, offer a CS7 Collection reset after 3 years, locking in the CC updates into a new perpetual license. You might be surprised at the number of extra user upgrades you pick up.

[BobLevine]

A little history lesson is in order.

Adobe bought Aldus, not for Pagemaker but for a new pagelayout application that Aldus was working on. It would be finished after the purchase and went on to be called InDesign. It was Aldus that recognized that PM was a deadend. Even their own engineers couldn’t figure out the spaghetti code that it was written in.

As for a CS7. That ain’t happening…EVER! Like it or not subscription software is here to stay and it’s not going away.