Trying to stay in business when operating systems and software are being upgraded around us can be problematic, as we've seen with the introduction of Mavericks and/or Quark 10.
With OS upgrades, it's possible to clone your boot drive, upgrade the OS on the clone and then see if everything works. It's even possible to stay ahead of the curve by joining the Apple Developer program and trying the pre-release operating systems on the clone.
A Quark "test drive" of a new version can also be run on the clone to test features and OS compatibility.
However, Quark has encouraged early adoption (i.e., purchase) of the new version by offering special, limited time pricing that's hard to resist. Of course, taking advantage of that doesn't mean forsaking earlier versions for production purposes while you test the new version, especially when the new version isn't backwards compatible with the old version. It does, however, mean purchasing and installing the new version before there's much of an opportunity to see what problems others are having, and using up a license in the process.
But there's a potential problem when testing compatibility with new OS versions. Having installed the new version of Quark, it would be carried over to the new partition as part of the cloning process, but what does running it on the cloned partition mean in terms of licensing? It's my understanding that a single-user license of QuarkXPress allows you to install the software on two computers for non-concurrent usage. It would seem that installing on a work partition and then cloning to a test partition in the same computer would need only one of the two licenses since a) it's the same computer and b) only one partition at a time can be booted from. If that's the case, then the testing of both OS and Quark versions in any combination can be accomplished on an ongoing basis.
But does it work that way in practice? Even Quark 10 updates done from within the program have gone through the serial number/authorization code process before Quark can be used and it's not at all clear if that, done on the clone, would use up the second license.
I remember a comment that "you only need to reactivate if XPress detects a change of hard drive, network card or logicboard. Restoring to the same hardware setup won't trigger activation." A clone to a different HD running on the same computer (e.g., another bay in a Mac Pro or a connected external) would appear to trigger reactivation. What, if anything, would that do to the license for Quark on the work drive? And is there still a second license available for installation on a laptop?
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Defensive upgrading
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