Will QuarkXPress run on OS X Mountain Lion?
Apple announced today that tomorrow Mac OS X v10.8 Mountain Lion will be released.
If you are planning to upgrade to Mountain Lion and use QuarkXPress, please read this; it’s Quark’s official statement on QuarkXPress’ compatibility with Mountain Lion:
http://forums.quark.com/t/28997.aspx
QuarkXPress and OS X Mountain Lion
With the release of OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) on Jul 25, Apple introduced a new security feature called Gatekeeper, which helps you to keep your computer free of malicious software that you downlaoded. Gatekeeper allows only software from trusted sources to be installed: Apps from the Mac App Store, and apps from registered software vendors who have built their installers with a Gatekeeper signature.
Because QuarkXPress 9.3 was released before Apple introduced this new feature, Gatekeeper (at its default settings) does not allow the installer for QuarkXPress 9.3 (or earlier) to launch if you try to install from a downloaded Installer.
However, there are two ways to install QuarkXPress 9.3 (or earlier) under Mountain Lion:
- Control+click/right-click the installer icon and choose Open.
- Open System Preferences, click Security and Privacy, display the General tab, and then click Anywhere under Allow applications downloaded from. (After installation, be sure to return this setting to its default state.)
While Quark has been testing with Mountain Lion for several months, the team is currently wrapping up testing. So in a few weeks, Quark will release a free update for QuarkXPress 9 that is compatible with Gatekeeper and has been extensively tested on the release version of Mountain Lion. That version of QuarkXPress will be the first version officially supported on Mountain Lion.
Until this upcoming version is released, Quark recommends that you use QuarkXPress 9.3 on Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Lion.
Both an engineer and a layout artist, Matthias bridges the gap between technology and people. Before joining Quark in 1997, Matthias pioneered print, Web, and multimedia products for multiple German publishing companies. He is an active participant in design and publishing communities and represented Quark in the Ghent PDF Workgroup.
From 1997 until 2019 Matthias played a central role in shaping Quark’s desktop, mobile and enterprise software. From February 2014 until January 2019 he headed Quark’s Desktop Publishing business unit; and was therefore responsible for QuarkXPress.
Matthias does not work for Quark anymore. If you want to connect with him, please visit his LinkedIn profile on https://www.linkedin.com/in/mguenther/
Update July 30:
Current test results and customer feedback show that QuarkXPress 9 seems to work fine under Mountain Lion with the exception of the Gatekeeper limitation, so that we are positive to be able to release an updated version of QuarkXPress 9 in a few days.
Update Aug 6:
current test results and customer feedback show that for _most_ customers QuarkXPress 9 seems to work fine under Mountain Lion with the exception of the Gatekeeper limitation.
However when using Mountain Lion with a few _specific_ Graphics Cards, the Welcome Screen of QuarkXPress causes the application to crash. So far we know of ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5750M, ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5770 and ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6750M having this issue.
Remedy: Remove the “Welcome Screen.xnt” from the XTensions folder.
We are working on a permanent fix for this.
More details here: http://forums.quark.com/t/28997.aspx?PageIndex=4#114829
Update August 14:
Quark just released QuarkXPress 9.3.1, which is officially supported under Mountain Lion:
http://www.quark.com/support/downloads/Details.aspx?fid=234
I currently have a Mac OX X 10.6.8 and am about to upgrade to Mountain Lion. I have QuarkXPress 6.5. What do I need to do to ensure my QuarkXPress works and I can access old docs? Thanks!
Hi Dana, QuarkXPress 6 is still PowerPC code and therefore needs a PowerPC processor or an emulation like Rosetta.
As Apple doesn’t support Rosetta under Mountain Lion anymore, you won’t get QuarkXPress 6 to run on Mountain Lion.
Your best option is to run QuarkXPress 9 on Mountain Lion, which is fully supported, see here.
The only other option I can think of is virtualizing Snow Leopard (which Apple might not allow) or using a virtual Windows.
Hi Dana.
First, please please upgrade to QuarkXPress 9. It works well on Mountain Lion, while 6.5 may have problems. Other than that, I would find all my QuarkXPress documents and add an “.qxp” file extension to their names. That way, newer/upcoming versions of QuarkXPress will be assured of claiming them as its own. (And I know: it sucks. We don’t use Macs because we want to deal with stupid file extensions. But that went out the window with Mac OS X, in some cases. Ugh.)
Hi – Wonder if anyone has experienced this issue and knows of any fixes?
So the Quark official line is that they ‘do not support versions older than QuarkXPress 9’, which is I think, frankly disgusting to not support a product that is only one full version older than their current version.
Anyway, that gripe aside, we run QuarkXpress 8.5.1 in our studio, and have just upgraded the machines to OSX 10.8.3. Quark runs fine, BUT some fonts no longer work in it. They work in InDesign, so its not a font installation issue.
The fonts appear to be .TTF fonts, most of the ones that don’t work are from sites like dafont.com.
Any ideas?
Many thanks in advance…
Scott
We’re looking at upgrading to Mountain Lion and have QuarkXpress version 8 – is it all the True Type fonts that don’t work or only some? We use Gill Sans, Jansen and Frutiger heavily. We do have postscript versions of some of these and would change to similar fonts that do work, but that would ultimately be a last resort.
Jay Nelson wrote: ‘Other than that, I would find all my QuarkXPress documents and add an “.qxp” file extension to their names.’ I’m late to the party here but, with the update to QXP 10 on the way, I thought those with lots of documents in older versions might find it easier to use Soxy from Rorohiko. And, if one keeps older versions of QXP installed, Soxy can be set to open older documents in the version in which they were created.
Claire: I don’t think there’s a problem with professionally-produced fonts. Some free fonts may be constructed oddly and confuse QuarkXPress, but professional ones should be fine.
Lindsey: Soxy is a good option, if you can make it work. We had mixed results at our studio — is it working perfectly for you?
Jay, Soxy has worked reliably for me with versions of Adobe CS back to CS 4 and up to CC, QXP 9, and so on. I haven’t tested against files from older versions of QXP. I’ll let you know how it goes once Soxy is up-dated for QXP 10.
One caveat: when there is a point upgrade to an app. that changes the file format (as happened with InDesign 9.1), Soxy will fail to recognise the file. I’ve found Support at Rorohiko very quick to fix this sort of issue.
What sort of failures were you seeing?
Lindsey: it’s been a while since I’ve tested Soxy, but what I seem to remember is that it had trouble with older QuarkXPress documents. I’m not sure if it was because of a lack of a “.qxp” filename extension, or what… I just remember giving up on it. Maybe it’s time to try it again! Thanks for the info.
Jay, I don’t think Soxy uses extensions, at least not exclusively. I tested by double-clicking a QXP9 project without an extension and got an alert box that read: ‘”Project1″ has no extension but Soxy thinks it should be .qxp. Do you want Soxy to change the file extension to .qxp?’ It may be, however, that Soxy does not support all of QXP’s older file formats. I don’t see any info. on the website but a note to support@rorohiko.com would probably elicit the information.
Lindsey: great idea! I’ll contact Rorohiko directly and ask about their support for QuarkXPress. I’ll report back here with what I learn.
Rorohiko have just pushed update 1.6.9 of Soxy with support for QXP 10. I haven’t tested but app. appears to support QXP back to version 6.
I have Quark version 8.2 and will be updating to OSX 10.9. Any hope for me that my old files will open?
Hi Amber, first, you should update (for free) to the latest version of QuarkXPress 8, which is 8.5.1.
And then, QuarkXPress of course opens “old” files irrespectively of the operating system used. QuarkXPress 8 opens QuarkXPress 3.1-8 files.
However QuarkXPress 8 is only supported on 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6, so I doubt you will be able to work flawlessly with 8 under Mavericks. QuarkXPress 9 and 10 are supported under Mavericks, see here please:
http://forums.quark.com/t/21811.aspx