What is the reason why the software that once dominated the market lost its position and declined

ByNick Royer

As the predecessor wrote as "Impermanence", it is common for people who have prosperous to lose their momentum due to some opportunity. Speaking of software that had once established an overwhelming position in the publishing industry, Quark's "QuarkXPress(Quark Express) ", but since the beginning of the 2000's Adobe's"InDesign(In design) "has become a situation that can make a big difference.

How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing | Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/quarkxpress-the-demise-of-a-design-desk-darling/


QuarkXPressRepresents the 1990sDTPSpeaking of "Composing on Mac (creating a document)" with desktop publishing software was synonymous with doing DTP using QuarkXPress. It was said that work would not come if QuarkXPress could not be operated, the situation is exactly what the industryDe facto standardIt was what I could call. When the designer Dave Girard jumped into the world of DTP it was exactly that era, but in 1999 AdobeInDesignMr. Girard looks back on what kind of circumstances existed that the industry map had to be rebuilt a large market over the years.

◆ Delayed response to OS X
In June 2001, Apple is a UNIX-based OS that transforms the traditional flowMac OS X CheetahAnnounced. On Mac OS X, it is very important for DTPAppleScriptWhenColorSyncAlthough it is equipped, QuarkXPress is lagging behind correspondence to nativeization to this. Following version 4.1, which was updated after the release of Mac OS X, followed by version 5 (not yet released in Japan), the response was completed in version 6. In the meantime, users are reluctant to pay the license fee every time the version is upgraded It was frustrating to be. In addition, at version 5, Mr. Fred Ebrahimi himself, who was then CEO of the time, told himself that users who are not satisfied with the Mac version as "the market version of the Mac version is tapered" told him to switch to QuarkXPress for Windows, There was also an event called.

ByWilliam Hook

◆ Appearance of InDesign
The battle Adobe challenges against QuarkXPress which dominates the market was regarded as enormously big, but in fact it did not face the difficulties imagined. In addition to following Quark's method, Adobe succeeded in providing the user with what the original digital DTP should be. Mr. Girard raises some key points among them.

◆ 1: Hanging indent
Even on the paper laid out according to the setting, the human eye may feel that the layout is broken by illusion. In the sample illustration below, the title "Thin & amp; Pretty" paragraph has been moved slightly to the left, the horizontal bar of "T" pops a few millimeters behind the logo displayed above it and the text below It is laid out like. This is an adjustment for correcting the illusion caused by the character shape of T, but this function was not implemented in QuarkXPress at that time.


In the illustration below, you can see that "·" of the letter "i" protrudes a little more than the layout frame, but this small difference will be a device to make the layout look more beautiful and it will sound like a finish.


◆ 2: OpenType font correspondence
It adopts Unicode as character code and has compatibility between different platforms such as Windows and MacOpenType fontInDesign which corresponds to, it leads to improvement of business efficiency.

◆ 3: Preview function
In the case of DTP, a wider workspace is displayed than the actual printed surface, so when checking with the display, it was a slightly different display from the final finished state, but in InDesign it is displayed It has a function to display and display it. It is a small function, but it is useful in actual workplaces.

◆ 4: Accuracy of preview
The part where the face is displayed in the figure below is the image of the preview screen of QuarkXPress and the actual printed output. While QuarkXPress is quite far from the result, InDesign makes sure that a pretty accurate preview display is taking place.


◆ 5: Transparency support
As in Photoshop and Illustrator, the transparency part inside the object was supported and succeeded in widening the range of expression greatly.

◆ 6: Support for search / replacement using grep
Utilizing the advantage of the UNIX-based OS, more advanced search and replacement become possible "GrepSupports command.


◆ 7: QuarkXPress file support
By coping with the file created with QuarkXPress, we were able to lower the hurdle to move to InDesign.

In addition to the points listed above, InDesign was the first feature of InDesign to install QuarkXPress, including support for Excel files, implementation of pen tools, character anti-aliasing, paragraph wrapping (wrap-around).

Mr. Girard says that these features brought in by InDesign were "steps away from QuarkXPress". As a result, QuarkXPress will lose its superiority, but I suggest that there are other reasons other than that. Dinis Williams, a former colleague of Girard, who was involved in the publication of a newspaper using QuarkXPress said, "There is no valid auto backup function when the software is forcibly terminated, even if you just add a shadow to the object, "Quark has lost the opportunity to respond to change as it was in a dominant position for a long time, as more versions of QuarkXPress goes on, I think that it will be irrelevant to us who have already shifted to InDesign, "he said.

◆ Price · Marketing Strategy
Jillard says that despite the fact that InDesign gained popularity, price and customer promotion strategies worked well. When comparing the price when considering whether to introduce InDesign or QuarkXPress before, it seems that the result is as follows (the price is different from the current one).

· InDesign CS: $ 699 (about 72,000 yen)
· QuarkXPress 6: $ 945 (approx. 97,000 yen)
· QuarkXPress 6 Passport: $ 1795 (about 184,000 yen)

In addition to the obvious difference in price, InDesign has "all language support" which only supports QuarkXPress 6 Passport, so further cost performance will be increased. In addition, InDesign was released in 2003 "Adobe Creative Suite"So we had created a situation that users who intended to purchase Photoshop and Illustrator had acquired InDesign unprecedentedly.

Combined with these factors, InDesign succeeded in breaking down the stronghold of QuarkXPress and succeeded in building a position as a champion of a new market, says Girard.

At the same time, however, pointed out that Adobe can follow the same path as Quark. Monthly system that Adobe started offeringAdobe Creative CloudAbout the strategy that the champion of the market takes, "I am dissatisfied. A company that got enormous and extremely glorious pointed out the possibility of forgetting to listen to customers' voices and said that Adobe hopes not to repeat the same mistakes as QuarkXPress.

ByMisskoco