I have used both inDesign and Quark in a professional print-design setting.
Another thing that the author left out here was the to be a power-user of nearly _any_ software package requires you to learn keyboard shortcuts.
I can remember day 1 I made up a big list of all Quark shortcuts, printed & laminated it and used that thing all day every day. This was a major hurdle to new Quarks users - they're too slow until they memorize the shortcuts.
inDesign was smart about this, not only could you _change_ your user shortcuts, but they were malleable enough you could even make the same as Quark's shortcuts if you so desired. You had the freedom to mold the software to your way of working.
Ultimately it became very very trivial for Quark users to switch _to_ inDesign, but going from inDesign _to_ Quark was like a step back in time.
I worked at a prepress & design company (in prepress) that used Quark. I had time to kill every now and then so decided to start reading and working through the InDesign 2 instruction manual (actual printed manual). I'd learn something and small and think "holy shit, this might actually be a wonderful application". It gave those tear to eye of joy type of moments constantly (something I don't get much with just about anything anymore). So I worked on getting the designers to switch. They were skeptical and at first mildly unwilling because it would interrupt their workflow but were eventually forced to by our studio manager. Their attitudes changed very quickly despite the pains of learning a new app and dropping something that they were masters of.
Anyway, while I had a rep for being quite technical and quick to learn stuff, they all had quite a few years experience more than me and were faster with the keyboard (I was no slouch). Switching to InDesign leveled the playing field dramatically for me, it was at that company where I think I went from juniorish/intermediate to senior level mac op within about a year or less. I decided to learn the native shortcuts because it was obvious that this was the app of the future. The designers used the Quark shortcuts but probably learned the native ones eventually. Well, one hopes anyway. Doing web application development now of course, can't stand prepress which has quite a low glass ceiling and is quite depressing really.
Another thing that the author left out here was the to be a power-user of nearly _any_ software package requires you to learn keyboard shortcuts.
I can remember day 1 I made up a big list of all Quark shortcuts, printed & laminated it and used that thing all day every day. This was a major hurdle to new Quarks users - they're too slow until they memorize the shortcuts.
inDesign was smart about this, not only could you _change_ your user shortcuts, but they were malleable enough you could even make the same as Quark's shortcuts if you so desired. You had the freedom to mold the software to your way of working.
Ultimately it became very very trivial for Quark users to switch _to_ inDesign, but going from inDesign _to_ Quark was like a step back in time.