Here's a simple, head to head comparison between QuarkXpress and Adobe Photoshop.

What? They're totally different programs, you say. Yeah, but they are each the flagship product of their respective companies. (And my comparisons with regard to Photoshop apply also to Adobe Pagemaker, and probably to their new, upcoming "K2" product.)

How long does it take to load the latest version of these programs?

Today, I received a brand new G3/400. I decided it was time to finally upgrade to the latest version of both programs. In the past, I stuck with the versions I was comfortable with (Photoshop 3.05 and Xpress 3.32) but I have been having some computer problems, and are worried that they're not compatible with MacOS 8.5.1. So today I loaded the latest version of each program on my brand new computer (Xpress 4.04 and Photoshop 5.02.)

(I am a legal user of both of these software programs, and have been for years. In both cases, the new versions were obtained as updgrade versions, since I already own them.)

1. Find Photoshop CD.
2. Insert Photoshop CD.
3. Run Photoshop installer.
4. Enter name and serial number.
5. Wait a few (under five) minutes for software to load.
6. Restart computer.
7. Download Photoshop 5.02 updater from Adobe's website.
8. Run updater.
9. Done!

Grand total: About 15 minutes.

1. Insert QuarkXpress 4.0 updater floppy disk and CD-ROM drive. Oh wait, my G3 doesn't have a floppy drive. No problem I'll just...
2. Find a CD-ROM drive and hook it to my Powerbook 2400. Insert QuarkXpress 4.0 updater floppy disk and CD-ROM into respective drives on my Powerkbook 2400.
3. Launch QuarkXpress 4.0 updator. Locate copy of Xpress 3.32r5 on hard disk. Swear when you see the following dialog box (artist's rendering):
4. Okay, I tell myself, I'm somewhat of a hacker, maybe I edited the sounds with ResEdit or something a long time ago, or something else happened, and QuarkXpress isn't happy about that, so I'll reload Xpress 3 so I can run the Xpress 4 updater.
5. Here's where it starts to suck. Quark's policies of making each new version an "upgrade" instead of a fresh install really turns any simple install or upgrade into the biggest pain in the rear.
6. Locate original QuarkXpress disks. Note that with Adobe products, you can use anybody else's copy of the install disk, and just use your serial number, to reload your legal copy. Quark does not do that, their installers are floppy-based and serialized. Lose your disks and it's time to call Quark. My work owns 70(?) or so copies of Xpress, and we need to keep all of those old disks around. With the Adobe Products we only keep 10 or so install disks around, because we can use them with any of our serial numbers.
7. Load QuarkXpress 3.2. It's on five floppy disks, takes about 10 minutes.
8. Update QuarkXpress to 3.3. One floppy disk. Under 5 minutes.
9. Update QuarkXpress to 3.31r2. Can't find that disk, so I go download that off of their web site and run it. Seems to work okay. About 5 minutes.
10. Update QuarkXpress to 3.31r5. Insert the QuarkXpress 3.31r5 updater disk. It tells me that this is not an upgradable version of QuarkXpress. It doesn't tell me why. Eventually I determine that my version of QuarkXpress is the MACINTOSH version, and I had attempted to use the POWER MACINTOSH version. (The "MACINTOSH" version is what normal human beings would refer to as the 68k version.) About 10 minutes wasted.
11. Find the MACINTOSH version of the Quark 3.31r5 updater, and install. Under 5 minutes.
12. Update QuarkXpress to 3.32r2. One floppy disk, under 5 minutes.
13. Update QuarkXpress to 3.32r5. One floppy disk, under 5 minutes.
14. Update QuarkXpress to version 4.00. One floppy disk and one CD-ROM. One really long installation code. About 10 minutes.
15. Reboot.
16. Update QuarkXpress to version 4.04. Download updater from website and install. About 5 minutes.
17. Enable file sharing and copy QuarkXpress 4.04 from the Powerbook 2400 to the G3/400.
18. QuarkXpress won't run because the Microsoft OLE components aren't in the system folder. Copy them over and reboot the G3/400.
19. That's it.

Total time: About an hour (including some swearing).

Conclusion: Adobe is a much more consumer-friendly company. Quark's paranoia about the possibility of piracy costs me time regularly. (I am a system administrator for a prepress corporation, and have gone through these steps multiple times.)

I started out using Pagemaker. I only tackled QuarkXpress because I needed to known Xpress in order to get a prepress job. After I learned Xpress, I found that I liked it a lot better than Pagemaker, so I switched over. But I've always felt that QuarkXpress purposely makes their products harder to upgrade, load, and catalog into your organization. I can't wait until Adobe releases their new "Quark Killer" product -- I'd love it if our clients switched over to it. Maintaining multiple copies (or getting a site license) is so much easier with Adobe products, that it would be pure heaven if Adobe cornered this market.