Anybody surprised: It's cheaper!
Bottom line always talks, huh?

Well, it didn't help Quark that they were almost 2 years behind in the transition to OS X. Adobe saw an opening and exploited it.

Plus, Quark's customer service has sucked for years. People have been looking for an alternative.

Quark was the Microsoft of desktop publishing for way too long and it went to their head. Good product but bad support and terrible pricing.

Adobe is hardly innocent, though. Photoshop in the Quark of electronic imaging ... wonder what competitor will show 'em up?

It also doesn't help that, from what I've heard, most designers say InDesign CS is just a better program. (One day my newspaper will leave the '90s and I'll know for myself.) See, for example, this discussion at Typographica.

As a J-School student getting ready to graduate, having used both programs for my design projects, ID is simply that much better than Quark. The school switched over to ID2 from Quark 4 at the end of 2002, between the time that I took my first design course and my second. I might be a bit biased, especially from the downright flaky performance of Quark in Classic 9 in OSX, but the switch to InDesign was a breath of fresh air.

There are just so many great features to the program, and it's nice to have a similar interface for design, image-editing and illustration programs alike. On top of that, InDesign is very versatile -- I was able to do a wider variety of basic illustration in InDesign than I ever could with Quark.

Also, to the author: This is a really great blog to follow -- it's a good way to keep up with some of the latest news design trends. When I start my newspaper design position in a few months, I'm probably going to be checking this site daily. Thanks for the service.

Adobe is hardly innocent, though. Photoshop in the Quark of electronic imaging

Not exactly. PS may be the only advanced photo editor in town, but Adobe isn't nearly as skimpy and slow with their upgrades as is Quark. PS has advanced significantly with each rev. It's a rare example of a product that improves without heavy competition. That's not MS-like at all.

And yes, on the InDesign vs Quark front, I can testify of InD's superiority as a long time XPress user who switched to InD 2 years ago and never looked back.

as is already mentioned, adobe's better with support and pricing, but their much more generous with licensing, as well.

and the seamlessness between indesign, photoshop and illustrator's a huge plus, too.

For me, this was the most interesting quote from the link:

"To help train the production staff, four staff members were charged with learning how to use the software. Those four in turn trained the Daily News’ remaining 10-member production staff, tailoring the training to their specific job functions."
Why can't all the staff have the professional training. I've been in this position, where I've had to learn a new system, then train others. If there's only 14 people, just train them all properly from the start; it'll be cheaper and less stressful in the long term!!!!
On the other matter, I long for the day when my paper gets InDesign; we've been promised it for about four years, but it hasn't happened yet. Meanwhile, I've learned to use it anyway...

We (TCU Daily Skiff, circulation 6,000) are switching our entire department to InDesign/InCopy this fall and I've been working busily to learn the new system from home. I remember the process of learning XPress 5.0 a few years ago. I took the two-inch-thick book and a G3 home with me and started reading, only to emerge several months later finally understanding how it all worked.

ID, on the other hand, has taken far less time to learn. While I'm not as fluent as with Quark (key commands, etc.), I can throw together a mean-looking page in much less time and with much less effort (alpha transparency support, finally!).

Oh yeah, and there are no stupid hardware keys.

Hi..
Its interesting to read Quark bashing all over .. I was a developer with Quark for more than four years and I have seen the company go downhill .. I wonder where it is going to stop !!

InDesign is a superior product, especially in the new world of PDF workflow. it makes Flawless PDFs that correct for many of the mistakes outside ad designers make (errant RGB images, etc.) and often require the most last minute correction in a news production environment.
ID also has superior typography handling, which makes any lover of type drool.
And like their Customer Service, Quark created a system that kept out casual users by hiding a secret layer of power user functionality -- i.e. short cuts. They are often hard to figure out and require multiple keys to use. ID and Adobe was smart enough to put most of the power user functionality in easy to find places and creating key commands that are easy to remember often involving only two keys. That's how you create a better program.

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