Gee, that's big of you, Quark

Just got this email from Quark, the page layout program that I ceremoniously dumped about a year ago. I no longer use the program, except for the occasional update to an old job that I haven't felt like converting to InDesign. Quark just came out with a new version that I have no intention of buying, and know next to nothing about. The email stated with great excitement, Important licensing change: Upgrade to QuarkXPress 7 and continue to run QuarkXPress 6. Yes, it’s true. Your license for QuarkXPress 6 remains alive and well when you upgrade to QuarkXPress 7

Well, what the fuck, Quark. You mean that before this big announcement you were actually forcing people to disable the old version that they had payed $1000 for? When anybody who has ever used Quark knows that any new version will be so full of bugs that they will end up reverting to the old version for the two years it takes Quark to fix all the problems anyways?

That's the bullshit that has caused everybody to abandon this company in droves. The fact that you set up the new release like that in the first place, and now consider it a big gift to your customers to let them keep using the old version shows that nothing has changed in Quarkland.

I'm very happy to be through with you.

[computers] [graphic design] [products] [publishing]

Quark, you and I are through

This is going to be a bit of inside baseball for most general readers. Not sure how many people outside the publishing business even know what Quark XPress is. For the uninitiated, it is the software program that has been the standard bearer for producing newspapers, magazines etc., since the publishing world went desktop nearly 20 years ago. I have been essentially married to it since I started using version 1.0 back in about 1987. Do other people whose jobs center around the computer feel that way about the software program they use most? That you know it so well... know all its quirks (a favorite Quark nickname)... know what annoys you about it... how to manipulate it to make it do what you want. It really is like being married. Can't live with it, but can't live without it.

Anyway Friday, after whining (along with most other Quark users) for nearly five years and wasting half the day trying to uncover the reason for it's daily flip-out, I started to switch my largest job over to InDesign, the competing program by Adobe. It's a huge undertaking, because not only do you have to rebuild the entire job template from scratch, but you have to essentially learn a new language at the same time. InDesign, from all my experience so far does everything better, but also does everything different.

Now as to why, I have had to take this drastic step:

Quark Xpress, for at least the last five years has become the suckiest software program on earth, and Quark the most arrogant company. What other program regularly corrupts files beyond repair, rendering a 50 page magazine file useless. Of course anybody who used Quark with any regularity has become so paranoid that they back up files, make duplicates, copy the files to another machine about every ten minutes, just because they know that eventually Quark is going to kill the file.

Five or so years ago, Apple moved its operating system to OS X, a system that required software developers to completely rewrite their software. Every other software company whose clients worked heavily on the Mac, had their software updated within six months to a year. Quark took nearly three years to come up with a release that was compatible with OS X, forcing users to either put off upgrading their systems, and therefore upgrading any other software they owned. Or to run a completely separate system in the background, a process that led to a whole host of other problems.

When Quark finally did come up with a new version three years later, if was so full of bugs, that many people still didn't upgrade. It crashes regularly, displays things on the screen that aren't really there, and many other problems too numerous to even get into.

Quark Inc. has also behaved like the arrogant monopoly that is was. Nobody (except me) ever bought version 5.0, because it came out after OS X, but wasn't OS X compatible. So 90% of users were still using 4.0. When Quark finally did come out with a new version that was OS X compatible three years later (6.0), they purposely put a block on it, so you couldn't downsave to 4.0. Essentially they were forcing everyone to buy the upgrade for every computer they owned.

So anybody that did upgrade right away had to deal with clients that were still on 4.0, and hence, couldn't open the files. Any users with a history with Quark know not to upgrade right away, because every new version they come out with is completely riddled with bugs. So users were in this classic Catch-22. Should I upgrade first, and have my client not be able to open my files, of wait, and have the opposite problem?

Over the past year, most of the publishing industry has been switching over to InDesign. I bought it about a year ago, and have been slowly learning it, and building jobs for new clients in it for six months. It seems like a great program. It may have its own share of problems, and Adobe is an even bigger monopoly than Quark ever was. But if nothing else, I no longer live in quite the fear I always did with Quark, that if I do something it doesn't like, it's going to destroy a week's worth of work.

So goodbye Quark. You were my first software love. We had some good times together. But now its time to leave your sorry ass behind.

One bad Apple

I've been a Mac guy for 20 years. I love Apple. I love Steve Jobs. But I'm really pissed at them right now. I just finally broke down and had to spend $82 on a friggin power cord for my Powerbook. The old one has been held together with electrical tape for the past year, and it finally will hold no longer. It's the most horribly designed thing I've ever seen from them. A cord about 1/32" in diameter that obviously will get pulled on and rip apart. And the fact that it costs $82 is just unbelievable. It's not just me. There are 443 reviews on the Apple Store page that nearly unanimously call it a piece of shit. 443 people took the time to rate a power cord. And the thing is, the new one will be just as bad, and in another year, I'll have to buy another. Here is just a sampling of the reviews on the Apple Store page of this expensive piece of junk:

• This adapter is terrible. It will fray, come loose, spark, and eventually fail to charge your laptop. However, it's the only one made for the powerbooks, so you're screwed. Laptops are meant to be portable, and this cable just can't keep up. I'm disappointed that a company such as apple would make such garbage. AND that they continue to do NOTHING for powerbook owners to resolve this issue. IF I COULD GIVE IT NO STARS I WOULD.


• We are on the third power adapter for my wife's iBook. It's painful having to fork over this much money yet again. If the failure rate for these things is so high, why would they charge so much money? What a disappointment! This weakens my trust in Apple.


• Durability is non-existent. Fire hazard is extreme. After receiving electrical shocks from frayed wires and an obvious defect in design, is it time to hold Apple liable?

Blogger can't spell blog

Judging from what I read around the blogosphere, there isn't a lot of spell checking going on. But has anybody who ever used Blogger's spell check, realized how crappy it is? It's really rather comical. Among the words that it doesn't know are Blog, - duh!, and Google (or google), which I believe is now a recognized verb. Even more ironic, Blogger is owned by Google.



Even when it does pick up a word that really is wrong, it almost never has any idea what to suggest. Check out the example below. It's smart enough to know that anydody is wrong, but the best it can come up with for a suggestion is anted. What the fuck is anted?



While on the subject of what sucks about Blogger. Why not the ability to do categories? As you can see, my posts are all over the place subject-wise. Really would like to be able to sort them by category, like all the good blogs do. Doesn't seem like rocket science. I know there are supposed to be workarounds, but none seen too easy to figure out unless you are a programmer.

There are no original ideas left

I've been somewhat obsessively blogging since I started this last week. A couple nights ago, as I was blogging on my laptop, while my wife watched TV, I said something about her being a Blog Widow. Was just something that popped into my head. I thought I was pretty clever. I said, "that's pretty funny, huh. I wonder if anybody has ever used that term". So I do a Google search on Blog Widow. 13,000 fucking hits! So much for being clever.