Intuit says new Quicken for Mac delayed to 2010 - Page 2

I've been running the beta for the last... well must be 9 months already... and QFL is a horrible start with no progress made over the year in fixing anything... You can replicate the functionality in Numbers, or maybe even TextEdit... As for Coverflow and crap... that reminds me of the old days of when I wrote Commodore 64 games... I'd design a great opening screen, some cool music, and then quit before the actual game was written...

Really, my online banking has almost reached the functionality of Quicken, Money, etc... I can get balances from other banks, credit cards... make all my payments... The only thing it doesn't do is investment tracking... which QFL has ZERO support for. It will download a balance, but does NO transaction reporting for capital gains...

I tried Investoscope, which despite the odd name, is a mighty fine investment tracking app. Mind you, that's all it does, but in combination with my own bank's online features, it's perfect.

YOu might be right -- I downloaded MoneyDance and was pleasantly surprised. iBank is pretty sexy -- I don't even know what Quicken bill paying is, but I'm happy with web payments personally. I'm busy -- don't have to time to screw around with crappy software, barely have time to test alternatives. What does Moneydance NOT do that Quicken does?

Bog down a Core2Duo with Rosetta running the most inefficient PowerPC Carbon Code ever written.

Sure there are others that might be buggier, but for a major software house, Intuit should be ashamed of Quicken for the Mac. No other billion-dollar software company sells software that is as shitty as Q for M. None. Not even Microsoft. That they continue to peddle this pile of binary crap is a capital crime for which their whole top brass should be shot.

No matter how well they rewrite the Mac version, if it cannot read and save native Q for Windows files, the product will still be a POS. If they're really starting from the ground up, surely they should be able to do that!

I tried the Mac version 2006, and it was not too hot. Windows version is much, much better. Sigh ... now I have to keep my Windows machine running til Feb. Maybe I'll try the current version.

Bring on the iPhone version of Quicken! Let it sync through MobileMe with the desktop!

OMFG, please no. Anyhow, I would prefer they make a good desktop application before trying to fuck up the iPhone.

Greetings from Australia.

You know, with the US version for the Mac due in 2010, our Canadian confreres missing out (at least initially: Quicken for Mac will be officially sold and supported in the U.S. only however, some Canadian financial institutions will continue to be supported. - Quicken blog site) Im not holding out any hope at all of getting a version that I can run in Australia.

If somebody from Intuit / Reckon will do the right thing by me and give me Windows code that will export my data from Quicken Personal Plus 2008 for Windows (that Im running under CrossOver on my Mac) into QIF so that I can import my data elsewhere, that would be appreciated. QPP08 was obviously cripple-ware fancy not being able to export financial data!! What a criminal oversight. Who the hell wants to export an address book?

Our financial year started 1st July and Im trying the alternatives. If my request (above) isnt answered, Ill just draw a line in the sand at 1st July and get on with life. If I do get export assistance, Ill happily add that data to whatever new personal finance software I select but Ill still have drawn that line in the sand.

Like all of the people posting here, Ive spent good money on various versions of Quicken products, only to get no or few software patches, to be charged $5 per minute to request assistance (so why bother?) and to find that the Quicken product failed to deliver one of the most fundamental functions when needed data export.

Intuit when you look out the window thats not a flock of birds you see in the distance. Thats our hard-earned money flying off to other, more focussed, customer-responsive software vendors.

As the police say: Move along, please. Theres nothing to see here

Gary Speechley
Sydney, Australia

i would delete my last name from your post. You never know.

What, us?

There are two kinds of people who buy financial software: people who use the software to manage their money, and people who use the software so they don't have to manage their money. I belong to the second group. I don't care about reports and charts and graphs and pretty pictures, all I am interested in is registers and electronic banking. That is Quicken's weak spot.

Quicken has a problem with file formats. Not only are the Windows and Mac development teams not on speaking terms with each other, the file format is fragile and liable to corruption. When I switched from Windows to Mac, I found out it was easier to import my Windows Quicken file into Moneydance than into Quicken for Mac!

Quicken's support was very unhelpful. Moneydance's support is friendly and helpful.

The new version of Quicken is going to have more charts and graphs and pretty pictures and special effects, but I am not interested in that. Since Moneydance is more compatible with Quicken than Quicken is, and since Moneydance actually supports its customers, l have no interest whatsoever in anything Intuit produces.

Actually, the major reason people still use Quicken is inertia, or a lack of awareness that there are several other good solutions on the Mac - including iBank.

Online billpay is the last major feature of Quicken not implemented by iBank because it is complex - not least of all for security reasons. If it were trivial to transfer money out of online accounts to a nearly infinite array of payees, every high school hacker, Russian mobster and Nigerian scammer would vacuum out your balances daily.

Nevertheless, this is the number one feature request for iBank and it will be implemented in a future version. (Yes, I work for the developer.) As noted above, iBank has come a long way in the past year, even since the release of 3.0. Anyone interested in seeing for themselves how capable iBank 3.5 is can try it for free: www.iggsoftware.com/ibank

EDIT: Nevermind.

Vapourware!

Pre-orders in October? Are they kidding? Who would pre-order software that has been delayed three times publicly and the only version released to the public was absolute crap?

When they discontinue the product due to low demand I hope they remember the got themselves in this mess.

Take a look at You Need a Budget. Mac version due soon.
People who like it, like it a lot

http://www.youneedabudget.com/

So we all agree that Quicken stinks and has for years, so there's really little reason to think the new version will change that. Based on what I've seen and read, even here, there seems to be some alternatives that have possibilities. Here's the brief list:

1. iBank
2. Moneywell
3. Moneydance
4. Prospects
5. Other


So which do you consider the best alternative and why? I'm leaning towards iBank simply because it now has an iPhone option, a feature greatly missed from my Palm days w/ Pocket Quicken. But I'm really interested in hearing "real world" feedback before I make the transition from Quicken.

Can Intuit feel the love in this thread?

File format compatibility or at least Data compatibility between versions as well as between OSes would be high on my list. Converting data is such a pain in the butt.

We only use the various flavors of Quicken and Quickbooks because clients often use these products. But for robust accounting for small business, it's hard to beat AccountEdge from MYOB.

They've figured out innovative ways to share data on networks and support their products in the manner Mac users are accustomed. We also appreciate the 'pay once and get free updates' licensing, which we pay annually.

There is a learning curve, but it's worth it. Many of our clients have happily moved over and never looked back.

I've been using Quicken for our partnership accounting for many years. My needs are pretty limited and I have no real background in accounting or finance. Which if any alternative would give me the smoothest transition?

At the risk of naked self-promotion: the developers of iBank have made Quicken/QIF data import a top priority since the release of iBank 3. We recognize that the seamless transfer of transactions, accounts and categories is pretty crucial for customers, and have ironed out a lot of wrinkles from the process. If you haven't tried this with the latest version of iBank - even if you need to retain years of Quicken data from either Mac or PC- you may want to see how easy switching can be. And as I mentioned above: it's free to try.

couldn't agree more...!!

Wow... so it's not just me!

I'm using Quicken 2004 ... because it works... mostly. (At least it does what I wanted it to do ... pretty simple stuff.) Now all of a sudden last winter, Intuit drops support for it ... meaning none of the online stuff works anymore... It can't download stock prices and such for tracking investments... what was the purpose of that?!?! ... I wasn't asking them to send me updates to the software, just let me keep using it!
I would have even bought a new version of Quicken except... there ISN'T one! (for Mac.)
Now I plan to do the free trials of iBank, Moneywell, etc... figure out which one I like best. I can only imagine there are a lot of Quicken Mac users like me ... we're not dumping Quicken... Quicken dumped us. And because of that, they'll never see us again, no matter how "good" their new vaporware turns out to be.

What's more important? Feature parity with Windows versions of the application, at the expense of pretty Mac eye candy? Or unique Mac interface at the expense of compatibility with Windows versions?

I'm a Moneydance user, and I've also spent quite a bit of time with iBank and MyMoney (www.mthbuilt.com). Both iBank and MyMoney have excellent customer service, so they are to be praised for that.

Ultimately, I just despise the iBank UI, which is purely a personal preference, but I couldn't live with it. Further, it seemed to bog down on a big data file.

MyMoney is a pretty young product but is extremely promising. It works on Mac, Windows, and Linux, which is nice. My major problems with MyMoney were (1) they don't support investment accounts yet (but it is coming), (2) account reconciliation is far too inflexible for my taste (you'll understand if you try it), and (3) I had trouble getting the online banking to work. But that product has a really rapid pace of development, so it is probably worth paying attention to.

So Moneydance is the big winner for me. Here are what I consider to be the highlights:
(1) truly cross-platform: runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux identically, and the same data file format works on all platforms
(2) the license lets a single user install Moneydance on all his/her computers. I have it running on two laptops (Mac and Ubuntu)
(3) helpful customer service in the official forum
(4) the company never sunsets older versions
(5) the company lets you upgrade to new versions for free for a year or two, and then at a discount thereafter
(6) the online banking is incredibly robust -- if your bank works in Quicken, it likely works in Moneydance too
(7) rock solid stability -- I've never had it crash

I will admit that budgeting and reporting are not quite up to Quicken's standards. But the basics are all there, including investment accounts, loan amortization, scheduled transactions, online bill pay etc. And there is a major update coming later this year that should put the advanced features closer to par with Quicken.

I participated in the beta of Financial Life for Mac and will tell you it was the most worthless software I had ever seen. And I am not alone. In reading the beta tester's forum I could not find one tester who had a single good thing to say about it.

Just as an example they completely got rid of Categories and replaced them with "Tags". This is how Tags were explained from the user guide,

Tags
If you’ve used Quicken or other personal finance applications before you may be familiar with
categories and classes, two ways to help track where your money is going. Financial Life uses a
new way of identifying where your money is going: tags. If you’ve used websites such as Flickr®
you’ll be at home with tags in Financial Life,

Using tags
We suggest you start by adding tags to the Tag List for each member of your family, a tag for
your house, and a tag for each vehicle. As you spend money, you can tag what you spent the
money on and who spent the money.

For example, Jane spent $45 on gas filling up the Volvo. You can tell the same story using tags:
Jane, Gas, Volvo, and enter the amount paid: $45. As you get used to tagging transactions this
way, you’ll be able to easily answer questions such as which car is costing more in repairs.

To me it has absolutely no structure.

As best I could tell in you needed to keep items purchased from one location separated you would need to enter them as new transactions.

Example, you go to Wal-Mart and buy some clothing goods, a CD and a gallon of milk. There is no way to itemize the transaction so your milk gets Tagged as a clothing item and entertainment because you have no option for splitting a transaction.

No way to denote Wages from Taxes as a single entry item, etc.


Someone commented that someone from Intuit had a prior association with Apple. I can only wonder if it was someone from Power Computing the cloning company from the 80's, that low era for the Mac.

Maybe I just wasn't able to figure it out but for me, yes the beta is truly that bad.

Intuit should rename the program "Slowen" then nobody will complain about the abysmal release schedule.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I am one of those folks who used Quicken as my primary banking system until they pulled the rug, and then my bank pulled the plug on supporting them. Not having many alternatives at the time, I reluctantly moved over to M$ Money. Three weeks ago M$ announced that Money was effectively going away and I was doubly pissed!

After seeing your comments on Moneydance, I gave it a whirl over the weekend. What a pleasant surprise! I was amazed that my history was able to be ported as an OFC file and all my custom tags, etc. came with it. Syncing was a breeze and no more endless waits for the updates to come through (I never did understand why that was always the case with both Quicken and Money).

I have sent off a few payments (the check kind), so I am still waiting to see how that functionality works. But hey, color me VERY happy at the moment.

I tried Moneywell, iBank and MoneyDance and was unable to import Quicken data to any of them. Is that because I only did a trail membership?

After all the raves about Moneydance, I decided to give it a try.

It made the worlds biggest mess of my Quicken file that I was importing. It was so bad that I didn't know where to begin to fix it and simply limped back to Quicken.

My Quicken file contains data going back to 1991. Perhaps there has been too many changes/conversions of my file over the years for Moneydance to properly convert.

After reading through this I decided to try MoneyDance. Whoa! What a bust! Not one account of any type came through with the right transactions or balances. Could not find anywhere to tell me how to setup direct-connect with my banks. The interface looks like a high school programming project that received a D- grade.

Going to look at iBank and some others now.

You might want to test this Cocoa application out.

http://scimonocesoftware.com/seefinance/index.html

Looks like they made good on their promise to start accepting pre-orders on Oct 12:

http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-f...l-software.jsp

They also renamed it to "Quicken for Mac", which I'm thankful for. Now we just wait and see if they are still releasing it Feb 2010 (their site still says that's the plan).

Oh great, even more features removed:

Perhaps they shouldn't be using jQuery or other javascript libraries for popup floats if they are just going to compress the images?

This image is not scaled properly in their web site code:



The image is grabbed from this page:

http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-f...l-software.jsp

All See It magnifiers have poorly scaled images.



What caught my eye was the Tag Cloud reference and whether Quicken will try to put every account into the Cloud.

I've been on the beta for roughly a year... it's still a bit of a mess, and has so many features missing. I'll have to stick to Quicken Windows for a while yet.