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Following MacEdition's report on the Quark CEO's now-infamous speech on the decline of the Mac market, Quark have released their own response, denying many of the original article's claims. Quark claims that the author of the MacEdition article "was not present" at the keynote and that CEO Fred Ebrahimi did not make make the "alleged" remarks attributed to him. MacRumors has published a response from Quark to this effect. Quark argues that Ebrahimi's cmments were "taken out of context and re-cast in an unflattering manner by an anonymous writer who was not present at the event during which they were allegedly spoken." Quark nevertheless stands by the comment that fewer of their customers are buying Macs. Quark's Communications Manager, Glenn Turpin, has his correspondence published in full at MacRumors. Turpin writes that Apple and Quark's relationship has "never been closer" and that people will be in for some "pleasant suprises" regarding what Apple and Quark will bring to market in the future. On Mac OS X Server, Mr. Turpin has this to say: "The anonymous writer points out that Mac OS X Server is not on the agenda for the version of QPS that uses a Microsoft SQL Server database or for Quark Digital MediaSystem, which uses an Oracle database. There's an obvious reason. Neither Microsoft SQL Server nor Oracle runs on Mac OS X. What they omitted is that we emphatically stated that the clients for both these publishing systems will run on Mac OS X." Turpin's missive also states that the delay in Quark-for-X has been delayed due to the company's desire to ensure a high-quality product. With a sideways shot at Adobe, he says that "There is only one major software company that I know that has dedicated 100% of its resources to publishing: Quark." Question: If the MacEdition writer was anonymous, how does Quark PR know they weren't there? If Quark knows that fewer publishers are buying Macs, it would be helpful if they cited quantitative data to this effect. True, as Turpin notes, the ad industry is experiencing a severe downturn. But does Quark's tardiness mean that X users will forego their dalliance with Indesign once Quark delivers XPress 6.0? We're inclined to think that Ebrahimi's reported comments were at least 50% accurate, and we don't believe that MacEdition would publish an article which was factually wide of the mark. This sounds like a PR put-up job to us, putting the best spin on what were, at best, unfortunate and unhelpful remarks from a CEO not known for his subtlety.
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