Apple financial software?
One of the most popular uses of a personal computer (at least among adults) is tracking personal finances. Not too long ago, this was quite simple. You simply bought Quicken and installed it whether you had a PC and Mac. It was easy to use, it was fast, and every thing worked.
Over the last 4-5 years, both Quicken and its primary competitor, Microsoft Money, has degraded to the point where neither of them are usable. Just take a look at the user reviews at Amazon.com, overall, they are more negative than most other mainstream S/W products. We understand that it is not easy to force users to upgrade to the new version every year when last year's version is pretty decent for most practical purposes, but both vendors have probably gone too far in terms of features that drive upgrades, like changing data formats, restricting export options, forcing the user to a specific (and probably not very secure) mechanism for importing of data from online accounts. Both applications also appeared to have gone through performance degradation, partially related to code bloat, partially caused by the much larger design team working on the product.
Is this an opportunity for Apple to step in an offer something better? Now that there is a good Apple application for most common "personal computing tasks", can Apple prove once more that simpler is better? Would you be willing to buy an Apple personal finance application instead of Quicken or MS Money if it had less features? Would it make more sense to offer the financial software at a decent price and charge a small yearly fee for online functions as opposed to forcing the users to an upgrade by disabling the online account access features after a set number of years?
Over the last 4-5 years, both Quicken and its primary competitor, Microsoft Money, has degraded to the point where neither of them are usable. Just take a look at the user reviews at Amazon.com, overall, they are more negative than most other mainstream S/W products. We understand that it is not easy to force users to upgrade to the new version every year when last year's version is pretty decent for most practical purposes, but both vendors have probably gone too far in terms of features that drive upgrades, like changing data formats, restricting export options, forcing the user to a specific (and probably not very secure) mechanism for importing of data from online accounts. Both applications also appeared to have gone through performance degradation, partially related to code bloat, partially caused by the much larger design team working on the product.
Is this an opportunity for Apple to step in an offer something better? Now that there is a good Apple application for most common "personal computing tasks", can Apple prove once more that simpler is better? Would you be willing to buy an Apple personal finance application instead of Quicken or MS Money if it had less features? Would it make more sense to offer the financial software at a decent price and charge a small yearly fee for online functions as opposed to forcing the users to an upgrade by disabling the online account access features after a set number of years?
Comments
there are several other banking software, my eye is on ibank3, there are other online system , but i need to be able to do category summaries for taxes and business reimbursement and keep 3-5 years of data
its' big potential but who will fill the quicken money void...?