You know, after yesterdays presentations by Adobe and Quark, I think QuarkXpress may really be dead.
For me, the guys presenting the products were like mini-summaries of the the companies and their products themselves.
The Apple and Adobe guys, like the products they were selling, were very smooth, polished, well-prepared salesman, very comfortable with themselves, their products and with presenting to a large audience.
The others, Extensis, HP, GretagMacbeth and Quark, were clearly not in the same league both in their product presentations and the people making them.
I also felt badly for the Quark guy making the presentation but after 15 minutes or so of hearing his second rendition of "synchronized text" (the first rendition came a couple of hours earlier in a brief introduction) I realized that this guy, and Quark in general, had nothing else to say. I'm sorry but Quark's rep seemed very green, unpolished, uninformed and disinterested in his own product. How am I supposed to get excited about the new Quark 6.0 if the guy selling it isn't? Unfortunately, for me, and I think many others, I saw that guy as a reflection of the company he is working for and the product he is selling. Deliberate, predictable and non-taxing maybe but at the same time clumsy, sedate, unprepared and disinterested. And costly. Bye bye Quark. Thanks for coming. Where's that Adobe rep?
Adobe is very obviously excited about their products and so are their reps. I have to admit, that excitement got me (and many of the other attendees) excited too. As mentioned, Sebastian really knows his stuff and his software and is very adept at making you feel that it doesn't make sense for you not to have his product. Very progressive and very smooth. Like the product he's selling. I wonder if the software runs as smoothly when not on a raided Dual G5? Given Sebastian's regular reference to the speed of the Apple-supplied system he was using' I'd guess not. Still, the presentation package was impressive.
Personally, I am not a big fan of monopolies and as someone else has said, Adobe is definitely becoming the MS of the design-based software world. But some of their stuff sure is cool and if it ends up cutting down on production times and establishing some semblance of reliability, what are ya gonna do? Quark 4 is brutal in classic mode and I ain't spending 1000 bucks to see if I can get 6.0 to work in Jaguar/Panther. Looks to me like Creative Suite already does AND, my 1000 bucks get me FIVE new design-oriented and integrated programs.
Now, if I could just find a thousand bucks.
