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Quark denies making ‘bug-free’ claim for Carbonised XPress

All a terrible misunderstanding

Quark says it never promised that the next version of Xpress would be bug-free, as Macworld UK reported, and that it's all a terrible misunderstanding. Macworld's Jonny Evans tells us that production gremlins were to blame for the claim that appeared before Macworld Expo, and no Quark rep said that.

Here's what Quark's Glen Turpin told us:



In paragraph 3, you wrote:

"Going back to create a Carbonised version would have put us way behind schedule," Quark's Glen Turpin told Macworld UK in a preview yesterday.

Actually, I told that to MacCentral in January. While those comments were true six months ago, they do not reflect the current state of affairs, so to present those statements as if they were made recently is misleading.

Quark stands strongly behind Mac OS X. We are hard at work Carbonising QuarkXPress, and the version of QuarkXPress immediately after 5.0 - dubbed version 5.X - will be a Carbon-native application, as we demonstrated in the Apple keynote address at Macworld Expo.

Rest assured that our commitment to Mac OS X is firm, and that a Carbon-native version of QuarkXPress is in the works.

You said: Turpin also offered one of those awful hostages to fortune by promising that Quark 5 would be "bug free". Bookmark this page now, we suggest, and we'll see you in six months.

I never made that statement. I believe you mis-read either the MacCentral article by Dennis Sellers or the Macworld UK article by Jonny Evans. Both those articles attribute that statement to my colleague Brett Mueller, who was in fact in London previewing QuarkXPress 5.0 at the Total Publishing exhibition on July 11, and who did speak to Mr Evans on July 12. I cannot confirm or deny whether Mr Mueller made that statement, since I was not present.

Quark's goal is to ensure that QuarkXPress 5.0 will be extremely stable software, and that our customers will be able to implement it in their workflows with confidence.

Software by its very nature is not bug free. No software works flawlessly for all parties in all environments. Quark is tested extensively prior to release. Quark is conducting a very extensive pre-release testing program with hundreds of businesses with demanding and complex workflows. This testing program will grow by degrees as we move closer to the final release, and we hope to identify and fix any bug that affects the majority of users in a material way.




Fair enough. We're happy to set the record straight. And call The Reg next time you're in town, Glen, OK? ®

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