On Tuesday Quark Inc. took the stage at Apple’s campus to announced that the long-awaited OS X native version of QuarkXPress would finally begin shipping next week. Alas, some Mac users have received conflicting messages when they’ve contacted Quark itself. MacCentral recently contacted Quark to get to the bottom of the matter.
QuarkXPress 6 for Mac OS X is the first version of Quark’s flagship desktop publishing app to feature native support for Mac OS X. In an interview with MacCentral on Tuesday, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller called QuarkXPress “the last big [application] to come to Mac OS X, and expressed his hope that it would help to spur more graphics professionals to embrace the operating system.
New features in QuarkXPress 6 for Mac OS X include project files — collections of layouts that can vary in media type, size, and orientation; “Synchronized Text” that requires only one edit to change in multiple places within a project; new printing features; integrated PDF creation; better XML tagging, and much more.
Apple and Quark also noted that QuarkXPress 6’s debut on Mac OS X signals a “rekindling of the relationship” between the two companies. Quark has openly committed to bringing other products to Mac OS X in the future, as well, including Quark Publishing System.
Unfortunately, it seems that as of yesterday, not everyone within Quark’s organizational structure had gotten the message that QuarkXPress 6 for Mac OS X would be shipping next week. When some MacCentral readers contacted Quark to find out about upgrading, customer service agents told them the soonest they’d be able to lay their hands on the software was by July 31, 2003 — more than a month and a half away.
Quark Inc. communication manager Glen Turpin told MacCentral that this was the result of a communications problem that the company is taking “corrective action” to remedy. “Some time ago we told [our customer service personnel] that we were going to ship by July 31 at the latest,” Turpin said, “but obviously we announced yesterday that we’ll ship next week, and their current responses should be in line withthat announcement.”
“I absolutely want to reassure you that QuarkXPress 6 will ship next week,” said Turpin.