A discussion about the software industry and their coders

Quark has worked frantically to release QuarkXPress 7 after the announcement of the Adobe-Macromedia merger last year. QuarkXPress 7 may be Quark's last attempt to revive it self from an ongoing downsprial (market share loss to Adobe InDesign) -- while arch rival Adobe Systems (ADBE) has built a formidable product line for Print, Web & Video Publishing through the acquisition of Macromedia.

Version 7 might be one of the largest (160 new features) and quickest upgrades Quark has come out with -- about 18.5 months after release of version 6.5. A record for a company that took over 24 months to go from Version 3.32 to version 4. The sense of competitive urgency is clear; even though Jurgen Kurz, Quark's VP of Desktop Products downplays it. At a launch event, Kurz said that he is more focused on Quark's customers rather than Adobe:

People ask me if I spend sleepless nights worrying about Adobe. I don’t. I lie awake worrying about you.

To bolster its fate against Adobe's InDesign and the products' strong integration with Adobe's Creative Suite products -- Quark has taken two steps:

• Acquired a Plug-in Developer ALAP -- to provide more functionality right out of the box
• Developed an Image Editing Engine that reduces the need of QuarkXPress users to make round trips to Photoshop.