Mac is standard for publishing/authors?

[danbuter]

I've heard that Mac is pretty much standard in the publishing field (in fact, a friend of mine who is writing for a publishing company was given a mac as part of his deal to write for them). Is there a reason for this? Do they have better publishing programs than those of other OSs, or something else? Just curious.

[explorer59]

The short story is that Apple started the Desktop Publishing industry with the release of the first Macintosh Computer in January 1984, although it didn't really take off until they brought out their Laserwriter printer the following year.

Since the Mac was the first commercially available computer in the retail market with a GUI, and the Laserwriter was the first commonly available Postscript laser printer, developers such as Adobe and others first created the software used by the Desktop Publishing industry on and for the Mac. As a result, the Mac became the defacto standard of the DP industry.

[danbuter]

Ah, so it's more an issue of momentum than anything. I know my friend is required to submit his stuff in pages format.

[JetskiDude911]

That's interesting to know. I didn't know about this. I do prefer to use Pages. The formatting and overall look of the finished document always seems to look better in PDF format or on paper than what I create in Word.

This is probably just me though. There may not be any difference really.

[danbuter]

That's one particular publisher, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's super common.

[aysiu]

I believe the industry standards for publishing are InDesign and (to a lesser extent these days) Quark Xpress.

Both programs are available for Windows, but for some reason companies generally prefer Macs for design layouts.

[AppleSteve]

Yeah, the standard seems to be InDesign these days with Quark dropping to second place. I must state though that it's much more enjoyable working in a publishing environment on a Mac than a PC and I use both platforms. :guitar: