08/16/2007, 2:50pm, EDT
Thursday, August 16th
Intuit speaks on Quicken 2008 Mac, Leopard
Continuing to show commitment to the Mac OS X platform, Intuit says it is looking ahead to 2008 Quicken for Mac product introductions and anxious for Leopard's release. "Intuit is currently planning for 2008 Quicken offerings and is investigating the best possible ways to serve the entire Quicken community. With anticipation of the launch of the new Mac OS X (Leopard) and Intuit’s ongoing focus on delivering customer driven innovation, more information around future Mac offerings will be shared at a later time," the company said in a statement to the press, adding "the Mac community is important to Intuit and our goal is to deliver the best solutions for new and existing customers to help them better manage their business and personal finances."
Intuit announced its Quicken 2008 for Windows line-up on Tuesday, introducing "Quicken Starter Edition," which features "only the tools needed to make it as easy as possible to see what's coming in, going out, and what is left to spend each month." The program includes an "Express Setup" feature streamlines the startup process and helps users get up and running in four easy steps, providing a complete view of their finances "in minutes." It also includes connections to more than 5,300 banks, brokerages and other financial institutions including PayPal.
Other additions to the standard and deluxe versions of Quicken include new Savings Plan tool uses the concept of a zero-based budget, in which every dollar is allocated to an expense or savings category.
While no official word has been released, it appears likely that similar features will appear in the forthcoming Quicken for Mac releases, though specific product options and pricing will likely differ.
Filed under: software
Other story tags: business software
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Word to the wise for QuickBooks users, getting an Intel native version is not worth upgrading to QB Pro 2007. It is not noticeably faster that the PPC version it replaces and considerably buggier.
Along with feature parity (how they can mention businesses without invoicing is perplexing) .csv data import & export would help, as data transfer is seemingly 'black magic' at best - and might serve to eliminate the 'sunsetting' of bank download capability - a seemingly profit only driven policy...
A competing product of note may be MoneyWorks...
Read between the lines people. There will be NO Quicken 2008 for the Mac platform. The Quicken 2008 for Mac they are talking about is their ONLINE version. They simply won't come out and say yes, there will be a Q2008 Mac application. They only use the word "product". These people know what they are going to do already and it ain't a physical product. Another poster over at MacWorld has figured out too.
Look at what they DON'T say, not at what they Do say in this article.
That's why they don't do it. There's no technical reason, even with regards to 'security' to sunset the data transmissions after three years except to get people to buy a newer version on occasion (hell, its why I upgraded Quicken 2003).
And you wouldn't think it would be that hard for them to come up with a 'common' file format between the windows and mac versions, either, would you.
There's no reason Intuit cannot provide feature parity and a common file and bank communications format with Quicken for Windows.
There's no technical reason behind some institutions having only Windows support. What its about is that Intuit wants them to pay twice, once for Mac connection, and once for Windows. A lot of places don't want to shell out twice, so they just pay for the larger audience. So its, again, all about the money.
And I think that with Intuits current format (QFX?), even if you download the file manually (which I have to do with both my banking institutions), they'll still see if you're passed the sunset date and whether they should allow you to import your own data. But I haven't tested it yet.