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

This discussion has had one false premiss, which is that there are no alternatives for Photoshop and Illustrator, and that the CC bundle therefore has no serious competition - at least as far as the print designers' trio of InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator are concerned. However, there is now also the option of Affinity Designer (instead of Illustrator), and Affinity Photo (instead of Photoshop). I must admit that I have not myself used these applications yet, but they have been very favourably received as ‘serious contenders’. Still using CS6, I have been waiting for Affinity to bring out it's long heralded Publisher page layout application, and this does, admittedly, seem to be well behind schedule, though beta in 2017 is still announced (it remains to be seen whether that will materialise). It is for this reason that I am, at a reasonable price, renewing my QuarkXpress licence for the 2017 upgrade, and that, coupled with the Affinity applications, all on permanent licences, will be my fall back when CS6, now beginning to look shaky, finally falls of its perch. It is still there, blinking, not quite yet an ex-parrot, but I get the feeling it won't be long. Adobe have some time ago withdrawn technical support for CS6, and it isn't designed to run on newer Mac OS versions. Since installing CS6 nonetheless on my new iMac, Indesign CS6, long my main workhorse, has remained more or less usable, but it is crashing more often, and its type rendering on the HD screen is poor - far poorer than even Microsofts Office's.

I was among the many Mac-based designers who 15 years or more ago, infuriated by Quark's sudden manifestation of neglect and arrogance (after a dozen years of using Mac Quark as an unmatched page layout application), turned gratefully to Adobe's Creative Suite, and really felt warmly towards Adobe, particularly for its development of InDesign, which proved to be a truly excellent application that I have very seldom had any reason to gripe about. The same was already true of Photoshop – a fantastically good tool. The same cannot be said of Illustrator, which, as others here have pointed out, was in many respects far inferior to Freehand, which Adobe unaccountably killed off without adopting its good features into Illustrator. Adobe has done absolutely nothing good with Freehand since (by all accounts not even in CC), and the ludicrous and indefensible absurdities of Illustrator's data charting features alone stand as a damning indictment of Adobe's neglect. That was the beginning of my growing disaffection with Adobe; long before any question of CC or the subscription model.

It is easy to see the advantages to Adobe of the subscription model, and I don't doubt that it has facilitated a quicker response to the OS changes that Apple has made. Bigger design practices no doubt can easily enough afford the subscriptions, and perhaps don’t care about being able to access their archived projects for some lean years after their approaching retirement. For small companies and individual freelancers, not necessarily working with big budget clients, however, the additional cost of the CC subscription is a real issue, when the workable alternative for all of us who wish to stay legal (there are surely plenty who don’t bother), has been to buy an permanent licence upgrade, at a favourable price (as I am now doing with Quark) every 3 years or so. It isn't ideal, but that is the best compromise between continuing to function and taking too much out of one's modest revenue. It is simply not a fair accusation that us small fry, being too slow to upgrade,  are 'the reason' Adobe has turned to the subscription model (neither Quark, Microsoft nor Affinity have found it necessary to withdraw the permanent licence option). Small fry are evidently neither a positive or negative consideration for Adobe - they obviously couldn't care less about us, and that arrogance is exactly what reminds many of us of Quark 15 years ago. Well, I’m glad Quark understood what had happened, and have survived.

It would be nice to be able to say the same of Adobe in 15 years time - and of Apple for that matter. I’m not sure either will be around, as Huawei, or Chinese or Indian outfits we haven’t yet heard of may well have driven them out of existence with far cheaper products. Meanwhile, to those contributors to this exchange who echo some of Adobe’s barking arrogance in their ‘Get real’ comments, let me say that, while I will do what I can to keep working with the dying parrot of CS6 for as many days as it has left in this world, my way of getting real is to prepare for an afterlife with QuarkXpress and Affinity, not with CC.

CC is great value for money, it allows their company to make a constant income in order to keep all employers and keep working hard at updates and new features. If you don't believe this, you don't support the industry. Stop being cheap and bite the bullet, CC is worth every penny

TonightWeDineInHELL wrote: 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? So, what do you all think? Will InDesign fade into obscurity like Quark Express?

TWDIH,

Do the newer versions of QuarkXPress do tables that are really tables? That's what won me over to InDesign! Also Object Styles, Cell Styles, Table Styles, Parent-Child Masters, and much more. I didn't switch with 1.0 or 1.5. I waited until 2.0 when it wasn't buggy.

If something newer and better comes out, will I remain loyal to InDesign? I no longer use Ventura Publisher, PageMaker, or QuarkXPress because InDesign is awesome. If something more awesome is developed in ten years or five years or next year, I will keep my eyes open. But that time is not now.

Does this answer your question?

One more thing I'd like to add (although others have touched on the same point): One of the biggest reasons Quark has faded into semi-obscurity is the company was unresponsive (and downright arrogant at times) to its customers. They were slow to upgrade to a PowerPC version, and when they did, they forced you to choose between 680X0 or PowerPC. Most software developers, including Adobe, included both versions in the same box. Years ago, when talking to a Quark representative about this, she replied "Well, we're not just ANY software company." And that was their attitude in a nutshell. It was like Lilly Tomlin (as the phone operator Ernestine) saying, "We don't have to care--we're the phone company!" Then they were slow about releasing an OS X version, and in the meantime InDesign just kept getting better. I was only too happy to switch to InDesign, which had features Quark XPress lacked, and users had been grousing about their absence for years. Quark dug its own grave, really. They are no longer arrogant or unresponsive, and the program now holds its own against InDesign, but I doubt they will ever enjoy anything close to the 90% market share they once did.

A better example would be Illustrator. There are many problems with Illustrator, yet Adobe has shown no interest in correcting them. Bugs remain. Features only half-baked decades ago are never updated. Panels get more complicated. If you want to examine the stroke for an object there are at least 8 panels you might need to look in. If anything came along to compete with Illustrator at a professional level Adobe might decide it was with fixing. And by fixing I mean burning to the ground and starting from scratch, which is what they did with PageMaker.

I also hate the subscription model (and I don't do my personal work in subscription versions so I don't get caught in that bind), but I don't expect Adobe to pour money into upgrading old versions for new OS problems. If at some point there is something in a subscription version that is compelling for my workflow, or if I am forced into an OS upgrade that won't run my perpetual versions, I'll bite that bullet, but I'm old, mostly retired, print-centric and a Windows user, so I have very little worry that day is on the horizon.

TonightWeDineInHELL wrote: 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?

People can only conjecture, of course, and that is what I am about to do here. I have seen Ventura Publisher, QuarkXPress, and PageMaker all fade into obscurity when better software came out. I loved them all at one time. And who is to say that won't happen again to InDesign in the future? Not me. Maybe its day will come.

But anytime soon? No, I don't see it. There is nothing on the horizon that is better. InDesign rocks and keeps getting better. I don't see a "lot" of angry customers like you say that you do—not to the extent that I did with QuarkXPress. I do see a few who are very vocal. But almost all of the people I talk to have a passion for InDesign because it is awesome.

Also, remember that in the beginning InDesign could open Quark files, then Quark put a stop to it. So I don't know if opening InDesign files with other software is something to expect or not. It's anyone's guess (except, of course, fro the engineers at Adobe).

I can't use any of the versions that I still have of Ventura Publisher or QuarkXPress or PageMaker because they are not compatible with my current Operating System and hardware. For me, I found it best to move forward.

My 2¢.

I don't expect you to agree with me, but you did ask us what we think and this is my own personal opinion!

Best wishes to you

I thought I was very clear why this came up.

I've read your articles for years, Bob, and generally agree with your observations, but what harm could come to Adobe by offering both models - a continuing, you're up to the minute subscription system, and a reset the clock every few years, here's the new baseline, outright license option? With the second, Adobe gets to recoup the money they haven't received from me for the past three years without the hassle of ongoing support, and I get the piece of mind of knowing that I won't be screwed if my internet provider goes down on the 31st, or Adobe inexplicably fails to reauthorize a paid up account (tell me no vendor has ever done this to you.)

BTW, I have licensed copies of every CS Collection from 1 through 6 sitting on my shelf for my use, just as I made sure there was a licensed copy for every designer in my employ, plus one for every floating workstation. I'd long since have one for CS7, if it existed. Insinuations to contrary are uncalled for, Bob.

Rich

That's a time line quibble, Bob, since Adobe sold Pagemaker 6 and 6.5 for nearly four years after it's purchase of Aldus, while it continued work on InDesign, but I'll grant you it.

By that time I had long since taken Stony Brook (and by extension many of the other SUNY schools) over to Quark, after (as you noted) the spaghetti that was PM 4, 5, and 6 made it impossible to work in. We bailed at 5.

Ironically, it was QXP 4, 5, and 6 that forced me to take the College Board (probably influencing many of the 2700 colleges and universities we worked with) to InDesign CS2.

And now Adobe is doing the same thing to their customers that Quark and Aldus did before them.

I suddenly have a Romeo Void ear bug. <grin>

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.