know | Future

MacWorld UK has published the results of a poll where of 776 readers 63% said they would stick with InDesign. My first surprise is that there were so many of the readership, which I assume is mostly UK, that has switched to InDesign, unless that 63% reflects those that are using both as has been my experience here in the US with my clients. The other surprising tidbit is that many users are warming up to Quark as a company and feel that they now provide better support than Adobe. I don’t know about you, but my experiences with Quark as a company have always been rather painful.

I also got a notification today that Quark has released a beta version of a universal binary of Quark 7, so it is obvious that they will ship way before Adobe’s vague “in 2007″ promised ship date for universal binaries of CS3.

For all your Quark vs Indesign news, check out this site, there is a blog for everything.

Props for the image to bronzefinger.com

I often come across people that feel they are not at risk for viruses and malware because they are on a Mac. Many small mac centric firms even run workstations with real Internet IP adresses and no firewall, OUCH! I blame Apple and their marketing for creating this dangerously superior attitude, but things are changing. Over the past couple of months Apple has been quietly patching systems over its automated system update process, twenty different vulnerabilities in March and an additional fifteen recently.

Now adding fuel to the flame, in a not entirely altruistic fashion, virus protection provider McAfee has released a study that points out that over the last two years “the annual rate of vulnerability discovery on Apple’s Mac OS platform has increased by 228 percent” Now, when you start from a base of near zero where nobody is interested in writing a virus to attack you, to now where we are seeing people begin to probe OSX as the platform increases it’s popularity, 228% may be a meaningless statistic.

The bottom line is not to be complacent about security and follow best practices including a firewall, network address translation, patching operating systems consistently, securing wireless access and running virus/spyware/malware detection software.

Xinet sent me word of a report they commissioned about return on investment on digital asset management systems. I am a big fan of Xinet’s product combo Fullpress/Webnative and feel that they have a unique take on the category having grown up in the print/advertising/publishing industry. The system is best for mid size to large agencies because of the cost of the software as well as the hardware required to run it on, typically Sun or SGI servers, and the need for specialized integrators or senior internal technical resources.

The document does a good job of providing a top level introduction to the sorts of things that you should consider when evaluating DAM systems and trying to come up with a financial justification for the expense. As with many ROI papers, this one is long on generalities and short on specifics. ROI usually boils down to soft costs that are difficult to pin down such as time savings or potential increased revenue. Included as apendices are also several case studies that highlight how Xinet clients are using their products, a great source of ideas as to how you can leverage DAM internally in the agency and externally towards your clients.

If you are considering a DAM system, or even if you already have one, you will find this document an interesting read.

Studio folk tend to be passionate about whether they are a Suitcase wielder or a Font Reservist, so there was some trepidation from both camps when Font Reserve was acquired by Extensis. Fear not though, CreativePro is carrying a detailed review today of the new Extensis Fusion font manager product that combines the old rivals Suitcase and Font Reserve. The product had already been given Best of Show of Macworld 2006 so it is not a surprise that Creative Pro likes it very much indeed, so you can all breate a collective side on both sides of the trenches.

Macworld Online reports today that in a recent poll it conducted users cited Desktop Publishing/Photography apps as those most critical before they will switch to Intel based Macs.  Though this may be obvious for all of us in the graphics industrial complex, the article goes on to compare Adobe’s versus Quark’s approaches this time around.  Quark, as I reported earlier, is promising that they will be releasing a universal binary version of their current public beta, but they are already late.  You may also want to check out an early review of the beta by Macworld

CreativePro has a lengthy and detailed review of the seventh incarnation of Quark Xpress which is currently in wide public beta test. They find much to like about the new version but question whether the change of emphasis from layouts to projects will cause a lot of disruption. The product looks different enough that you may be tempted to trade its learning curve for Adobe InDesign’s.

The product has only been released in PowerPC form (as well as Windows) but a universal binary is promised for the end of January. The target release date is March 31st. I recommend that you participate in the beta though they will have to come up with something pretty spectacular to stay the exodus to InDesign.

My friend Sam Bogoch who has long been in the business of digital asset management systems for ad agencies and other creative companies, lately as principal of Seefile, purveyors of the awesome entry level DAM system of the same name, has just started an online forum called SeeJungle for all things DAM.

Take a swing by and register

IDC is reporting that Instant messaging has achieved critical mass to be considered a mainstream tool. With 12 billion messages being transmitted each day the statistics support it. Personally I feel that IM is important less as a means of communications, after all, who doesn’t have their e-mail client open all the time, but more as an instrument of presence in an increasingly distributed environment.
You can read a teaser of the article here, of course, you will have to pay much bucks to get the full study.

I am sensing some real momentum building for the adoption of InDesign. Though some of the news lately comes from Adobe’s PR department claiming a high rate of adoption of InDesign in newspaper production, I think that we may be soon to turn a corner and be able to say goodbye to Quark Xpress once and for all. Adobe has also recently announced the availability of the Adobe InDesign Server which will only be available from system integrators that will use the core InDesign engine running on central servers to design end to end workflow systems.

Another interesting bit of news is that a company called Markzware has released a converter plugin to export Quark Layouts to Indesign called Q2ID that promises to be much better than the conversion provided by InDesign. Though pricey at $199, if it works as advertised, may pave the way for some serious defection from Quark. Every shop I know is testing InDesign with more or less vigor, and if you aren’t yet, you should…

Update

CreativePro has a new article up talking in depth about Aperture and though it is strictly based on what Apple has made public and an interview they conducted, it provides more detail and some screenshots of the product. If you are an agency IT guy, you need to be ready to get at least one copy in to test. Though I suspect, and most concurr, that Aperture will not kill Photoshop like Final Cut killed Premiere, it may be close.

Apple has just surprised everybody (except me of course, I said they had something extra up their sleeve) by introducing Aperture a RAW format end to end workflow and photo editing software. There have been some rumblings that the Macromedia Adobe merger would endanger Photoshop on the Mac platform. Though Aperture is not as feature rich as Photoshop, it is finetuned to provide services needed by photographers not provided by Photoshop and as such may eat into their market. Some of the features are a lightbox, versioning that provides non-destructive modification to originals, etc. Aperture will be available in November for $499.
read more at Apple’s web site.