Comments on: Quark Brand Suggestion Box

by: Matthew Treder

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 06:23:23 +0000

Multi-machine editing of a single document in real time.
If there remains a hail-Mary, holy-grail silver bullet that could win back the constituencies Quark has traditionally owned, this would be it. At the second-largest daily newspaper in Oregon where I worked, page designers are stuck with legacy software from Digital Technologies (”DT”) that hasn’t been updated since Mac OS 9. And so, six years and four large cats later, they’re stuck with it.
Why do they stay with it? You can open a page on five different computers and work on it simultaneously. With five minutes to deadline, it’s the single killer app that makes OS X, and even InDesign in its current incarnation, irrelevant. The layout program that gets there first will win back legions of harried journalists working under crushing pressure from deadline to deadline, but doing it alone on one machine instead of in tandem on several.

by: Shay

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:39:48 +0000

It would help if Quark stop releasing BETA app with version #. It’s very confusing, one might mistake quark 6 for a real pro, user oriented product, then people build expectations and get disappointed. It’s well over-due for quark’s 10-year old product to become something worth talking about.

by: John

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:09:21 +0000

Curl up and die.

Your product is irrelevant. Even when I am forced to use Quark your half-assed layers system and very low res image rendering alone are enough to make me do as much work in Photoshop as I can. Again, Adobe rides to the rescue.

I thought your product was half-baked back when I had no choice but to use version 3.3 and it really has not changed very much in a decade, has it?

Retire you arrogant losers.

by: Samuel John Klein

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 17:13:11 +0000

Here’s a thought: QuarkXPress™ Home Edition.

Seriously.

I’ll bet there’s an enourmous number of self-made and home newsletter and flyer desingers who would jump at the chance to own something with the market currency of QuarkXPress – but even at the reduced price, who at home could afford it?

This occurred to me after meditating on the success of Photoshop Elements, the Photoshop For The Rest Of Us. A stripped-down but still butt-kicking version of PS, it’s had great succes, and it doesn’t seem to have diminished Adobe’s professional currency at all…as a matter of fact, it seems to compete in no way or form with pro-level PS, and the nature of the program makes Adobe look even more innovative.

I think I QuarkXPress Home Edition paired with something like FreeHand (which Quark could purchase from Adobe and restart development) could be a huge success.

by: hunter

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:54:23 +0000

Your first paragraph is very tongue-in-cheek and hilarious. “Spiffy new logo”? I guess you probably meant “Repurposed, stolen logo”? I’m amazed that Quark has the gall to continue to use the Scottish Arts Council logo. I guess they think SAC doesn’t have enough money to sue so they can get away with it. “Hip, fresh promotion”? So hip and fresh it was the butt of endless negative commentary. Thanks for the laugh this moning.

by: erika

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:49:51 +0000

Above all else, Quark needs to release a stable, feature rich, processor-friendly v7 NOW.The multiple projected release dates have added another joke to the routine otherwise known as “Open Mike Night” at 1800 Grant. While 29 months is a short upgrade cycle for Quark Inc., they’re supposedly stepping up to play with the big boys now — let’s see it already. “Ensuring it’s ready?” Again with another zinger for Open Mike Night — as they’ve never been bothered with such frivolities before.

Secondarily, they could focus on a few other open issues:
1) find a CEO, it’s been 5 months — not unheard of, but for a privately held company under such pressure where sinking or swimming are the only viable options, well…
2) stop relying on third-party plug-ins to do what the competition simply has, or humbly adds, as out-of-the-box features.
3) stop making fools of themselves with marketing which clearly violates the most basic false-advertising standards. don’t bother with belittling the competition, except when cold, hard facts dictate otherwise (e.g. Quark does THIS better, and here is WHY…)
4) stop using mom-n-pop stories, or worse, blogs, as customer testimonials. surely the corporate sales team can provide you with bigger-name Quark advocates. If the corp. sales team can’t deliver solid, big-name case studies, just look through the licensing records — one or two large ad agencies, one or two large publishers, one or two large retailers with in-house marketing depts, et al.

by: Jim Pascoe

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 19:49:02 +0000

Is this article a joke? I love how “a firm release schedule” links to an article that talks about summer 2005.

Quark doesn’t need better marketing — they need a better product.

by: Bob

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:42:01 +0000

1. Don’t ripoff other people’s logos.