This post continues from my previous post QuarkXPress 7 beats Adobe Systems Macromedia Studio 8 to win MacWorld Editor's Choice. The Beta of Intel Mac ready version of QuarkXPress (7.01) is now available. Adobe InDesign for Intel Macs will be available next year, per Adobe Systems's (ADBE) FAQ on the support of Intel Macs. This QuarkXPress Beta can be downloaded from Quark's website which introduces the Beta as a "Universal Binary":
What is the QuarkXPress 7 Universal Binary public beta program?
The public beta program is your opportunity to engage with a community of other beta users, report issues, request feature enhancements in future releases, and take a hands-on look at the new features before QuarkXPress® 7 for Mac Intel-based machines is released.
I just wish that Quark had been a bit more user and Press friendly and called this Beta product something else than a "Universal Binary" (and then going ahead to explain what this term means). This is bad marketing and seems like some hardcore techie is running this Beta Program instead of a savvy Product Manager.
Right on dot toward one of my pet Product Management peeves. When products get run by techies not Marketing Savvy Product Managers these shabby mistakes happen:
Normally smaller software companies let software developers build a product with top management giving directions. Later if the company grows; the engineering driven culture stays...Then, suddenly a competitor comes out with a product that is perceived to have better marketing strategy, greater customer appeal, more focused feature set, a better developer network startegy, and more satisfied user base. Everyone shrieks out about the need for Product Management!
As I had pointed out in my previous post Will QuarkXPress 7 help Quark against Adobe Systems? the Intel Mac version of Quark is actually one of the most marketable "features" of QuarkXPress 7:
What may prove to be a saviour for Quark is the readiness of QuarkXPress 7 to run on Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL) Intel Mac machines. Quark has promised an Intel Mac compatible QuarkXPress 7 by the end of summer.
Adobe InDesign earlier made a major killing over QuarkXPress by being the first of the two products to be available on Apple Computer Inc's Mac OS X.
Apple Computer Inc. released Mac OS X v 10.0 Cheetah on March 24, 2001 and an upgrade Puma v 10.1 on September 25, 2001. Just 5 months later Adobe released InDesign 2.0 on January 21, 2002 which was compatible with Mac OS X. QuarkXPress 6 debuted in mid June 2003. Thus Quark delayed the release of Mac OS X comptible QuarkXPress 6 by over 1 year after release of Mac OS X compatible InDesign 2.0 and 2 years after the official release of Mac OS X.
The delay of Mac OS X compatible version of QuarkXPress actually hit the sales of Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh machines. The delay peeved several Graphic Designers keen to move to Mac OS X but continue using QuarkXPress. (Several moved, including Influencers like David Blatner). Many of such Graphic Designers did not upgrade to new Apple Macs that ran only Mac OS X. This had hurt Apple sales.
The delay of QuarkXPress 6 had strained relations between Quark Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. so much that Quark's CEO Fred Ebrahimi publicly apologized for the delay of QuarkXPress 6 and hugged Steve Jobs during the launch event. In receprocation Steve Jobs publicly acknowledged the importance of QuarkXPress to Appple. He stated that
while 6,000 applications were available for OS X, one very important one was not, and now with Quark's adoption of the platform, the OS X migration was complete.
This time around, Adobe seems to be busy managing its merger with Macromedia, and Quark has taken the leap. I expect several people to migrate to QuarkXPress 7 on Intel Macs.
At a time when Quark needs to get maximum milage of its edging out Adobe Systems (ADBE) Adobe InDesign in being first on the Intel Mac -- better Marketing is important. Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) will eventually promote QuarkXPress 7's readiness for Intel Macs in a much smarter way than Quark is currently promoting its own cash cow. Come on Quark. Learn before its too late!
