In January of 2002, Quark dumbfounded Mac design professionals by releasing QuarkXPress 5 sans support for Mac OS X. Because of Quark’s rush to release an already outdated product, Mac-based print designers have either held back in upgrading from OS 9 to OS X, or have bumbled along, forced to run QuarkXPress in Classic mode, or directly within OS 9. Since I continue to accept print design projects, like Jeff Veen’s latest book, Quark’s incompetence has been one of the reasons I’ve avoided switching back to Mac and to OS X.
Yesterday, the final piece of the puzzle may have fallen into place with Quark’s announcement of the release of QuarkXPress 6, complete with support for Mac OS X (Jaguar). Knowing their reputation for pushing out buggy software with n.0 releases, we may still be forced to wait a little while longer to see truly stable OS X desktop publishing software from Quark. But at least the ball is rolling.