

QuarkXPress is again a strong option in 2019, but it's got a long way to go to unseat InDesign


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That includes Apple's free Pages app, which is part of the iWork suite and offers surprisingly good page layout features. They are in the abilities of the software, but there's also pricing and the entire ecosystem that each app has created around itself. It's not as if those strengths are always in specific features, though. We're also, however, now in a position where we have a great many options.Įach of your options, most definitely including InDesign, have strengths that the others do not. Which means there are practical reasons to choose something other than InDesign. So it's genuine problem that Adobe is forcing them to do it. However, the people who most benefit from a subscription, and for whom the cost of that is more than worthwhile, are the same ones who cannot risk upgrading in the middle of a job. One of the selling points of subscriptions was that you would always have the latest version. While Adobe won't or can't explain the reasons, it appears that it's because of a legal dispute that the company has changed how users can stay on older versions of InDesign. More recently, however, there have also been legal issues that are affecting users. We've covered how third-party alternatives are helping people whose needs make Adobe Creative Cloud uneconomic. However, QuarkXPress is again a powerful app and now it's Adobe that has alienated users, first with its subscription-only model. And the reason Adobe InDesign replaced it is as much down to missteps by Quark as it is the correct steps by InDesign. That's because it's been decades since Quark ruled the world. You still had to figure out whether you were a Quark or InDesign person, but for the longest time, that was substantially less of a hard choice than it should have been. Before that was released, your choice for the right page design app was clearly Pages for basic work and either Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress for the complex jobs. Clockwise from top left: Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, Apple Pages and Affinity Publisherīlame Affinity Publisher.
