Big problems with QuarkXpress on some Macs
The latest version of QuarkXpress, the venerable desktop publishing software developer, does not play nicely with certain Apple Mac systems, apparently those running Snow Leopard on some or all processors.
Details are thin on the ground, but the issue has turned into a major headache for some designers that are still using the Quark product but have upgraded to both Snow Leopard and to some of the latest-generation Mac systems. The problems are not minor. If you are affected by the issues you simply cannot use any of he latest purchased versions of Quark.
Oddly enough, it is still possible to use the latest trial version of the software, though that is only for thirty days and it is not known if Quark will get the problem fixed any time soon. It is possible that they will be able to give you more time on your trial, but since the latest for-sale version is newer than the trial version, there may be feature differences between the two. Besides, having to use the trial version after you have paid for the licensed version is at the least a little hokey and is a large expense of wasted time in any case. Nor is such a situation likely to give users a warm and fuzzy feeling about Quark.
Some of the details will be found by looking at threads on Quark support forums here and here, and by following the links embedded in those posts. The latest word from users is that they have had difficulty getting a definitive reply from Quark on the issue. One user was able to contact a Quark support representative using the online chat feature, though it took a couple of days to get that conversation going. The Quark rep was very clear that this is a well-known issue and that there are many users that are being effected. The support rep said that Quark is aware of the problem and is working on a fix. The rep confirmed that the company would extend the time for the trial version until the issue is finally solved by an update. That assumes, of course, that you can get a support rep when you need one.
This is, as they say, no way to run a railroad. Designers tend to have to work within tight deadlines with their clients. It can be difficult to make those deadlines when you need to spend so much time trying to troubleshoot why one of you major pieces of production software won’t run and when the publisher is very slow in letting you know what the problem is and fixing it. In case anyone has missed it, Adobe InDesign is a great alternative to Quark and does not come with all these problems.
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January 11th, 2010
Thanks to some help from a few of the affected customers on this forum we’ve been able to isolate the cause of this problem. It is a crash during activation that happens only on the newest Mac models, which have Firewire ports with an address that begins with a non-zero value. It has nothing to do with Snow Leopard per se, although affected computers come pre-installed with Snow Leopard. To confirm whether you have an affected computer you can follow these steps:
1. Select About This Mac from the Apple menu
2. Click More Info
3. Select File > Save As and save it somewhere
4. Open this file in a text editor like TextEdit
5. Do a Find for the string “class IOFireWireIP”
6. Under that section there will be a line that begins with “IOMACAddress” and has a string of letters and numbers that begins and ends with a semicolon. If that string begins with a value other than zero then you have an affected computer.
The good news is now that we know exactly what’s causing it we’re able to fix it. We’ve already patched the application and confirmed with a group of customers that it does resolve the problem. Today we rebuilt our Mac installer and we’ll post it on our website by next week. Affected users can download it and reinstall using their existing validation code. I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. We’ll use this experience as a motive to revisit our activation process and see if there are ways to simplify it to avoid problems due to hardware changes in the future.
Activation happens the first time you launch QuarkXPress. If you’ve previously activated successfully on the same computer and you’re still crashing at launch then it’s likely a different issue. The same goes for users with older computers that don’t meet the criteria listed above. In these cases you should troubleshoot system-specific variables like fonts and preferences.
Dan Logan
Product Manager, QuarkXPress
March 2nd, 2010
I have 10.6.2 running on a quad core intel and I cannot open quark docs even though i am running 8.15 is anyone else having these problems