Neil Hughes
The announcement came on the official Quicken blog from Scott Gulbransen, senior manager of public relations/communications with Intuit's Consumer Division. Gulbransen even acknowledged in his post that it was reasonable for consumers and pundits alike to wonder about the new Quicken for Mac, considering it was first announced in early 2008 for release that same year.
“But after speaking to customers at Macworld 2009, and opening our public beta of Quicken Financial Life for Mac to thousands of you,†he wrote, “we learned the product was not doing what we – nor customers – wanted it to do. We listened, and we learned.â€
In 2008, Intuit said it would rebrand Quicken as "Quicken Financial Life for Mac.†At the time, it was being re-written from the ground up as a Universal application that better utilizes modern-day Mac OS X technologies like CoreData and Cover Flow.
In Thursday’s blog post, Gulbransen explained that Intuit has, in the interim, continued to tweak the new Quicken for Mac.
“We went back to the drawing board and are making changes to everything from what the program does to how it looks,†he wrote. “We spent extra time building a reconcile mode for the new register, a robust Windows-to-Mac transfer function for new Mac users (and existing customers running Quicken on a Windows virtual machine), and redesigned the experience to make it look and feel like a native Mac application should.â€
Preorders for the new product will be available at quicken.com beginning on Oct. 12.
When it was first shown at the Macworld Expo in January of 2008, Quicken Financial Life for Mac was pitched as a major overhaul to the financial management software. Intuit said it aimed to reduce the clutter and confusion associated with existing versions of Quicken for Mac.
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72 Comments
Looking pretty good from those screenshots. I'd say this is definitely a good thing, given how painful the current Quicken software is to use. And I'm glad to see a Mac-centric interest from a company like this, instead of the once typical 'port it and get on with it' approach.
Intuit's support for the Mac has always been pitiful, especially considering Bill Campbell being on Apple's board of directors for so many years.
I'll believe it when I see it.
The only reason I run VMware Fusion is for Quicken for Windows. I had years of Quicken data before I switched, and since the Mac version can't read the windows version, I have to run Fusion to read my old data and for the beneit of using the windows version. The Windows version is fine, too bad they didn't port it to OSX but just wrote a new fairly pitiful app for mac users.
Intuit's support for the Mac has always been pitiful, especially considering Bill Campbell being on Apple's board of directors for so many years.
I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm not sure I'll ever go back to using Quicken even when they do release it. I don't understand this company at all.
I've seen all the demos and screenshots to date and other than the fact that all the registers are in coverflow view, I don't see what's so different about this software or what's taking so long for it to come out. I don't understand what's even so great about coverflow view in this context or what it adds to the interface. The rest of the "interface" is basically just the list on the sidebar, although knowing Quicken's penchant for multiple toolbars we can probably expect more of that as well.
Intuit's design ethic bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Toast which is notorious for being a very, very simple application made needlessly complex by adding a lot of transitions, "helpful additions," and glitz all for the sake of appearing to be more than it is.
I don't get it, and I'm considering it a fail until I see something that changes my mind.
Same deal here - About the only reason I have Parallels and Windows XP is to run Quicken. The Mac version is pathetic. If Intuit releases a Mac version that has the feature set of Windows Quicken and works transparently with all banks that support the windows version including "direct connect" - I'm there. If they play the same games as before and banks have to jump through hoops to separately support the Mac version - forget it.