Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Eight long years after its last real update of Quicken for Mac (version 2007 in August 2006), and some four years after release of its "Quicken Essentials for Mac" downgrade, Intuit finally released a "new" personal finance software product for Mac. Is it, at last, the cross-platformed Quicken, compatible with *any* Quicken for Windows version, that Mac users have been telling Intuit we needed for 26 years, since the first "Quicken for Mac" in 1989? No. Is there even a free download trial version of it, as there is with the far more capable, better supported, and cheaper full-featured personal finance software for Mac, iBank 5+, Moneydance and SEE Finance? No. If you want to try Quicken for Mac 2015, you have to fork out up to $80-plus (more than competitors) to discover a software product that, just like "Quicken Essentials for Mac", yet again lacks many essential features even of obsolete Quicken for Mac 2007, let alone lacking full cross-platform compatibility in the Quicken range. Intuit obstinately continues to deny its Mac customers the one Quicken for Mac which might be impressive: a Quicken for Mac with the same basic design and ALL features of the popular and successful Quicken for Windows, and capacity to read, write and work back and forth on native files between the two. I cannot identify any other high profile productivity software, with the same brand name in both Mac OS and Windows, which cannot read and write mutually compatible files without conversion. Intuit, with its mutually *incompatible* Quickens, stands out as a unique repeat offender in what is factually a gross form of deception. Many consumers evidently are misled to the reasonable, but false assumption current versions of Quicken are equal across platforms. In fact, this product should not be called Quicken for Mac: there is not, and never has been, any such thing as a real Quicken For Mac. The so-called "Quicken For Mac" product line should be given a name that reflects its incompatible, standalone, feature-poor reality. Call it *anything* else but Quicken... "Lacking For Mac", "Quacken For Mac" or "Slacken For Mac" would be more appropriate product names. Intuit's absurd, abominable, *abysmal* performance with Quicken for Mac has gone beyond a joke into the realm of insult to the Mac personal finance software customer community. Intuit again is vaguely promising to add missing features -- from a long list of missing features -- at some unspecified time in the future. Seem familiar to anyone? It's the post-Quicken for Mac 2007 vaporware song and dance routine all over again, re-enacted by the all-time star performer and unbeatable industry champion of Mac vaporware, Intuit Inc. Many of even the most sympathetic and long-term devotees of Quicken for Mac now are puzzled and perplexed. This is amply summed up by the following two posts in the Intuit Quicken Community website on 22 August 2014. They appear under the exasperated original poster's heading, 'Why, after all this time, has Intuit produced a subpar version of Quicken for the Mac called Quicken 2015?' "voxjleklrqtfkes "Quicken 2015 "This product is an extension of Quicken Essentials. It remains far behind Quicken 2007 and its predecessors in its ability to select and report data. It has many arcane features such as the "pickers." These are useless for those of us with many categories. How does one readily select (report) all but one category ... there is no practical way, for example. "The user interface, Yosemite-like it is, is a retrograde step compared even to Quicken Essentials. I find, on a 27" iMac, the register listing to be virtually unusable. The numbers and columns do not readily stand out, as with Quicken Essentials and Quicken 2007. "That's a problem. "Unfortunately, I will stick with Quicken Essentials until I can find a third-party alternative. Quicken was a great product when I started using it a decade or two ago. But it's been downhill since the mid-2000's -- why oh why?" "jacobs "SuperUser "The answer to your question is a long and winding road of Intuit's on-and-off development of Mac software since shortly after Quicken 2007 came out 8 years ago. The Quicken 2007 software uses building blacks that Apple has stopped supporting in the modern Mac OS, and parts of the code are 20+ years old. They set out to build a new version, called Quicken Financial Life for Mac, which never came to market. Then they set out to build a new core of Quicken, which came to market in 2010 as Quicken Essentials. A full version of Quicken Deluxe was promised for the following year, but for reasons I've never read about, that effort was killed and the development team was disbanded. Then in 2012, they hired a new development team to build on the work that had been done for Essentials to create a full-fledged modern version of Quicken for Mac -- and this release of Quicken 2015 is the first step in a multi-step process. "It represents a significant enhancement to Quicken Essentials, but it is missing many features users desire from Quicken 2007. In a departure for Intuit, the Mac development team has been allowed to pre-announce that there will be a series of free updates to Quicken 2015 as they continue programming to build out the features of the program. For the benefit of Essentials users who have not had updates, and Quicken for Windows users hanging onto old PCs or WinXP virtual machines, they decided it was better to complete, test, and release a version of Quicken 2015 that doesn't do everything today, and add to it over time -- rather than spending another year in the lab trying to develop a full-featured version that would satisfy everyone. "The product manager has said publicly that this first release of Quicken 2015 won't meet everyone's needs, and they've been very upfront about the features not present in Quicken 2015. The hope is that development will continue at a good pace, and additional investment tools, better reports, and other features will follow in the months ahead. Quicken 2015 today doesn't meet all my needs, but I'm encouraged that it seems to be headed in the right direction. And most importantly, it represents a tangible re-commitment to having a robust Quicken for Mac from Intuit management." My final comment: "jacobs, Superuser" 's assessment that Quicken for Mac 2015 "represents a tangible re-commitment to having a robust Quicken for Mac from Intuit management" is consistent with the hopeful expressions which have greeted this product from the eternal optimists of Quicken's shrunken, battered Mac customer base. Unfortunately, this sentiment represents the triumph of hope over experience. It is long past time for Intuit to deliver a *real* Quicken for Mac, and to send the de facto Lacking For Mac product line to the knackery. I, for one, migrated my 14 years of detailed Quicken for Mac data in 2012 to iBank, a genuine cutting edge full-featured personal finance application, frequently updated and very well supported. I have looked at, and have been impressed also by Moneydance, which is particularly notable as being a true cross-platform application -- something Quicken was ideally placed to be, but never has been, from the 1990s to now. (iBank 5+ is a Mac OS and iOS-only application, but with exceptionally flexible file import and export features, including better compliance with Intuit's own QIF file exchange format than some Quicken-branded products.) After more than eight years of empty promises and Mac vaporware from Intuit since Quicken for Mac 2007, I refuse to drink any more Quicken for Mac Kool-Aid. I have experienced, firsthand, the entire history of personal finance software on Mac because I have kept financial accounts on my Macs almost every day since 1984/85 (initially using a long-forgotten product called Dollars & $ense, then Quicken, MYOB and iBank, and Microsoft Excel in Mac and Windows as a financial calculation and reporting application since version 1.0). I am totally unimpressed by Quicken for Mac 2015. In my earlier review of Quicken Essentials for Mac at http://www.amazon.com/review/R3RBWLK74B6EPJ/ I wrote, in part, that Intuit's epic failure to properly update Quicken for Mac amounted to "the worst betrayal of customer loyalty and dashed customer hopes in the entire history of Mac software". I described Quicken Essentials for Mac as "a toy plastic knife for the tasks of skinning the personal finance grizzly bear". Quicken for Mac 2015, with features that place it somewhere between the toy-town accounting Quicken Essentials and the obsolete Quicken for Mac 2007, merely strengthens my conviction of having been absolutely correct in earlier negative assessments. Indeed, the outrageous con Intuit has foisted on consumers with Quicken for Mac 2015 shows I have been far too mild, not harsh enough in my past criticism, excessively restrained in spraying this product line with caustic metaphors. No other software maker has a track record to rival Intuit in repeated releases, and the most assiduous neglectful nurture, of Mac products which are the software equivalent of ox carts hyped up as Teslas, Sopwith Camels in F-22 Raptor livery, or Barbie Dolls pitched as peers of Gisele Bündchen. I recommend the same response to every other Mac personal finance user. I also recommend extreme caution and skepticism when reading ALL positive reviews of this mediocre, bottom-rung product. The pattern of four and five star, one and two line unsubstantiated positive reviews, often posted around same dates from sock puppet accounts that have posted nothing or little else, is highly suspicious. The overall average star rating, which has been skewed upwards by these highly suspicious (in any case, unreliable) reviews, should be entirely ignored. On all the facts, and in comparison with Intuit's own Windows range and other manufacturers' superior competing products for Mac, Quicken (Lacking) for Mac 2015 is a genuine one-star item: the lowest of the low, just another "toy plastic knife for the tasks of skinning the personal finance grizzly bear". POSTSCRIPT (23 June 2015) Being an incurably curious masochist, I purchased the boxed version of Quicken for Mac 2015 over the counter from a reputable retailer in Philadelphia in April 2015. The cost was $80.99 including Pennsylvania’s 6% sales tax. Intuit's anti-customer policies and attitudes had prevented me, as a non-US resident, buying the online download, or the boxed version, until my next visit to the US. My hands-on experience of this awful product has confirmed my lowest assessments of it derived from pre-purchase research. I tested it two ways: 1. importing my old Quicken for Mac 2007 file via the QfM 2015 conversion (note: it converts, it does not read or write QfM 2007 data), and 2. starting a new file from scratch. Almost a year has passed since the initial release of QfM 2015 in August 2014, but the latest update version 2.5.0 has added no significant features to redress any major deficiency of the initial release. Most astonishing of all, Intuit seems still not to have worked out that many Mac users travel, work, earn, spend and invest outside the United States and in more than one country and currency. "Quicken for Mac 2015" is not even basic: it is sub-standard, for all the reasons I and other reviewers and comment writers have set out in great detail. Mac personal finance software "basic" includes 1. Multiple currency support, and 2. Ability to read and write native files between any same-branded products on Mac OS and Windows. Quicken for Mac 2015 cannot do "basic", despite being the latest iteration of the Quicken for Mac line which was launched 26 years ago in 1989. It is the longest-running personal finance product line for Mac, yet it is the *least capable* product in the entire field. As stated above, at least three competing products in the field, iBank 5+, Moneydance 2014+ and SEE Finance, are years - even decades - ahead of Quicken for Mac on most criteria. QfM 2015 is as capable of meeting "basic" personal finance needs as an ox cart is capable of meeting a car buyer's basic need for transportation because it has wheels. QfM 2015 deficiencies and flaws are innumerable, but here are a few more in addition to those specified above and in the 80-plus comments attached to this review: • Currency on converted file defaults to USD$. If you want to change that, no preference setting is available across the entire file: it is necessary to go into the settings for each account and change it there. • Each account can be set to different currencies – but no currency exchange rate conversion in Quicken is possible! • QfM 2015 deviates from long-established accounting practice in terminology, accounts structure and reports. Look in vain for a balance sheet, cash flow or other such standard report. • When starting a new file from scratch there are no standard charts of accounts or category sets for common purposes such as household accounting, small business, or other common user profiles. * Cannot import or convert multiple currency transactions from Quicken for Windows or other multiple currency capable applications. • Conversion from Quicken 2007 for Mac will not carry over scheduled transactions. • QfM 2015 by default saves its data file in the Library folder, a folder intended only to contain auxiliary system or application files like fonts and preferences. There is no File>Save As command. The Quicken working data file can be moved, but with a non-standard File>Move To command. No other Mac database application I ever have seen works this way, for good reason: saving working data in a System-related folder is not compliant with Mac OS design, and could get novice Mac users into trouble.