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How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

arstechnica.com

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Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#31

Post by wmeredith »

danielweber wrote: post #18
smacktoward wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Quark made a lot of mistakes, but I agree that this was the Big One. Quark's audience were Mac users, Mac users were moving to OS X, Quark refused to go with them. Even at the time it was an utterly baffling decision; it hasn't gotten any easier to understand with time. I would love to read an article that interviews Quark insiders about why they made that choice, what the internal factors were that drove them…

What portion of their users were Mac users? I vaguely recall Quark being in the category of things where the software cost more than the hardware. At some level it can make sense to tell the user to switch their hardware and OS (since it's the smaller portion of the cost), but you still need the customers to listen.

There's more to the pain of switching your hardware than just the material cost. As a designer, when I finally got away from Quark, it was good riddance to bad rubbish. Their entitlement problem (No, you switch your hardware, ecosystem, technology culture) went beyond their marketing acumen into their UX design.

Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#32

Post by larrys »

goatforce5 wrote: post #25
bane wrote: post #3

I think this is a good example of what lots of people call the "MBA business model". It's a bit unfair to the MBA, but the idea is this: 1. End up in control of a thriving business. Doesn't matter how, flashy credentials and a nice suit, mixed with lots of buzz words and business speak usually work. 2. Fire everybody responsible for driving the product forward, frame this as "increasing profitability" or "cutting cos…

> I wish I could remember the name of the machine, because I've never seen anything else like it Sounds like a phototypesetter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phototypesetting (I'm probably going to get some terminology wrong here, but...) My mum worked at a regional daily newspaper. They had 2 or 3 phototypesetters in the corner of their computer room. Each one was about the size of 3 full height racks. They'd print o…

"Sounds like a phototypesetter:"

You are correct. I owned one type - Itek Quadritek (another was Compugraphic). The fonts were essentially plastic disks. At the time (early 80's) each font was $40 (80's) dollars.

I later (about '86 iirc) replaced this with a Linotronic which was driven by not only a green screen front end (as described) but later the first Mac 128k (I think Pmaker 1.0 required 512k mac). The lino was $80,000 in 80's dollars approx iirc.

Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#33

Post by DanBC »

bane wrote: post #3

I think this is a good example of what lots of people call the "MBA business model". It's a bit unfair to the MBA, but the idea is this: 1. End up in control of a thriving business. Doesn't matter how, flashy credentials and a nice suit, mixed with lots of buzz words and business speak usually work. 2. Fire everybody responsible for driving the product forward, frame this as "increasing profitability" or "cutting cos…

> I don't have a point, just thought I'd add a little first hand history.

Your anecdote is much better than the article I submitted.

Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#34

Post by ChuckMcM »

bane wrote: post #3

I think this is a good example of what lots of people call the "MBA business model". It's a bit unfair to the MBA, but the idea is this: 1. End up in control of a thriving business. Doesn't matter how, flashy credentials and a nice suit, mixed with lots of buzz words and business speak usually work. 2. Fire everybody responsible for driving the product forward, frame this as "increasing profitability" or "cutting cos…

This is all too true. The interesting thing is when companies get into this sort of death spiral you can usually spot it if you look carefully. If you're a competitor with an "800 lb gorilla" which has just entered this territory you have a good shot at killing them if you execute well.

I speculate the reason this sort of technique persists though is that the only people who get hurt here are the lower level employees and the customers. Smart investors make money on the short selling, the top management makes money/reputation on the original upside.

Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#36

Post by dreamfactory2 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #24
billyhoffman wrote: post #10

A product with 95% market share needs engineering a lot less than it needs sales/finance. As engineers, we see this as "business guys screwing it all up." But these companies are acting rationally give the environment they are in. Why the focus on sales? Because at that size of a market share the features of the product matter less. Adding feature X is very unlikely to get you more share. Additionally, the product ha…

> The only way a company in that market can continue to grow revenue and profits is to reduce costs and increase sales. Hence the focus on sales guys who can talk the talk, bundle software and discount, and do everything to eck out more share. Meanwhile finance guys come in and look to see what they can trim, and often that's engineering. Honest question from a non-businessperson: Why do you have to keep growing reve…

At that size you need to innovate to even stand still as the environment is changing around you, and this flux only gets magnified by your market share.

Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#37

Post by larrys »

bane wrote: post #3

I think this is a good example of what lots of people call the "MBA business model". It's a bit unfair to the MBA, but the idea is this: 1. End up in control of a thriving business. Doesn't matter how, flashy credentials and a nice suit, mixed with lots of buzz words and business speak usually work. 2. Fire everybody responsible for driving the product forward, frame this as "increasing profitability" or "cutting cos…

All of your history is essentially correct. I owned a company in this business in the early 80's (started it right out of college btw.) We bought the first linotronic ($80k, driven by a Mac running Pagemaker 1.0) in our city so essentially we had the first service bureau you might say. Taking and printing disks (even from a Mac) was a complete mess and generally super aggravating. Side fact: This was all before fax machines were in widespread use for proofing. That in itself was a major leap in getting customer approval.

Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#38

Post by larrys »

DanBC wrote: post #33
bane wrote: post #3

I think this is a good example of what lots of people call the "MBA business model". It's a bit unfair to the MBA, but the idea is this: 1. End up in control of a thriving business. Doesn't matter how, flashy credentials and a nice suit, mixed with lots of buzz words and business speak usually work. 2. Fire everybody responsible for driving the product forward, frame this as "increasing profitability" or "cutting cos…

> I don't have a point, just thought I'd add a little first hand history. Your anecdote is much better than the article I submitted.

Having gone through all this I definitely appreciated both the article posted as well as the parent comment.

I will add my own anecdote about Quark from that time period. They had a total cocky shitty attitude. This was back at the time when by comparison Apple (iirc) seemed downright friendly to customers. Also users of Quark definitely looked down upon anyone using Pagemaker. Quark (as the posted article mentioned) had a firm lock on the market and was seen as the choice of true artists. (Once again, from my memory).

Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#39

Post by bane »

DanBC wrote: post #33
bane wrote: post #3

I think this is a good example of what lots of people call the "MBA business model". It's a bit unfair to the MBA, but the idea is this: 1. End up in control of a thriving business. Doesn't matter how, flashy credentials and a nice suit, mixed with lots of buzz words and business speak usually work. 2. Fire everybody responsible for driving the product forward, frame this as "increasing profitability" or "cutting cos…

> I don't have a point, just thought I'd add a little first hand history. Your anecdote is much better than the article I submitted.

Not at all! The article dug up some old memories I thought folks might be interested in reading a brain dump of.

Re: How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

#40

Post by e15ctr0n »

tim333 wrote: post #4

The article mentions Quark lost because it became rubbish but does not give the more interesting reason as to why that happened, basically that "The original owner sold the company and the new owners fired the entire development staff and outsourced all development and customer service to India" http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=s...

Quark India had a policy of hiring only fresh graduates and paying them very little. After 6 months of training and 1 year of work, they would fire the whole lot and recruit fresh graduates again[0][1].

When this cycle was repeated every year[2], word got around that hundreds of well-trained but desperate Quark employees would hit the job market in March[3]. Other software companies would wait in anticipation and snap them up.

[0] http://www.coderanch.com/t/29639/Jobs/careers/Perot-Quark

[1] http://www.jatland.com/forums/showthread.php?7090-Walkin-in-...

[2] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/Quark-Cit...

[3] http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050307/biz.htm#1

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