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Intuit - pay us to switch to Mac

pseudobrit

pseudobrit

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 23, 2002
3,416
3
Jobs' Spare Liver Jar
Wow... just did some sniffing around on this topic after reading about it on MacWorld.

Unfortunately, QuickBooks 5 is living in the Dark Ages when it comes to the cross-platform compatibility that is the current hallmark of Mac business applications. Name your favorite business program -- Microsoft Word or Excel, FileMaker Pro, MYOB AccountEdge -- and you can bet not only that their file formats are the same in both Mac OS and Windows, but also that the Mac applications have features that equal or exceed those of their Windows counterparts. This is not true of QuickBooks 5.
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And found this bit of brazen BS on Intuit's site...

Intuit is expected to make an announcement in March of 2003 regarding the availability of a fee-based data conversion service for QuickBooks for Windows to QuickBooks for Mac. The current expectation is that the conversion service will be available by March 31, 2003. Pricing has not yet been determined; however, the current expectation is that it will be under $200.
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WOW! You mean as incentive to switch a business over to Mac, you'd get to pay for the new hardware, the new QB software (with no real feature updates from six years ago) and then pay a fee of over $100 to get your data onto the new machines as well?!!?

Intuit can rot in hell... :mad:
 
Sounds a lot like DigiDesign and their upgrades. Pay for a release that takes you into X with virtually no enhancements. Ha!

Dan
 
Intuit is pretty useless to me anyway. I gave up using Quicken and MacInTax (stupidly named TurboTax) a year ago.

They haven't given us anything with feature parity with the Windows version. Let them be as loved as Quark.
 
What are you all using for personal finances under OS X? I'm really getting sick of the crap that is Quicken for Mac.

3 versions ago, when OS X was new it was, somewhat, acceptable to have some quirks, but they've had PLENTY of time to optimize it. Heck the 2003 version was simply a big bug fix release. It's slow, buggy and barely supports online banking.

My wife (who just took over doing the bills) is about to go buy the Quicken for Windows or M$ Money to run under VPC or on her work PC. I'd really rather support a Mac product though.

Any suggestions?
 
Don't get me started about Intuit. I am so pisssed about their service so called osx version of QB 5 and the lack of quickbooks 2003 PC version compatibility. I use mac version but my accountant like most accountants use PC version. Intuit can kiss my butt
 
Originally posted by bennyek
Don't get me started about Intuit. I am so pisssed about their service so called osx version of QB 5 and the lack of quickbooks 2003 PC version compatibility. I use mac version but my accountant like most accountants use PC version. Intuit can kiss my butt
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That's the part that bugs me most. They put out a product with no PC-to-Mac compatiblility, expect people to line up to buy it, then would have the audacity to make you pay for the service to transfer the files from PC to Mac when that should have been a feature all along!

BTW, you can transfer from Mac-to-PC with no problems, it's built into QB2003. What a friggen joke. It's like they're trying to force you to migrate to PC!
 
Originally posted by eric_n_dfw
What are you all using for personal finances under OS X? I'm really getting sick of the crap that is Quicken for Mac.

3 versions ago, when OS X was new it was, somewhat, acceptable to have some quirks, but they've had PLENTY of time to optimize it. Heck the 2003 version was simply a big bug fix release. It's slow, buggy and barely supports online banking.

My wife (who just took over doing the bills) is about to go buy the Quicken for Windows or M$ Money to run under VPC or on her work PC. I'd really rather support a Mac product though.

Any suggestions?
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There is something out there--an application called CheckBook. Here's the link: http://www.splasm.com/

It's either that or I'll write my own in Java.
 
I never really understood why they aren't cross platform compatible. Is there some evil conspiracy here? What's the negative reason for compatible files? The PC can read mac files built the mac can't read PC files. It's almost as if Intuit [or M$] feel that if QB for mac can read PC files that everyone would switch to the mac! Oh the horror if that happened. Other then the absurd, why is it so fricking hard to make the mac version able to read the PC version? Oh? Maybe it's because the mac version is so ancient that half the stuff it would read aren't in the mac version? Ah, that makes me more upset now. Why can't MYOB be more legit?
 
Originally posted by Kid Red
I never really understood why they aren't cross platform compatible. Is there some evil conspiracy here? What's the negative reason for compatible files? The PC can read mac files built the mac can't read PC files. It's almost as if Intuit [or M$] feel that if QB for mac can read PC files that everyone would switch to the mac! Oh the horror if that happened. Other then the absurd, why is it so fricking hard to make the mac version able to read the PC version? Oh? Maybe it's because the mac version is so ancient that half the stuff it would read aren't in the mac version? Ah, that makes me more upset now. Why can't MYOB be more legit?
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What's wrong with MYOB?

As far as I know they and their product are fine and uncompromised.

It would take Intuit approximately 15 minutes to implement and test a routine to read the Windows-compatible QB file. Your point about missing functionality says it all.
 
It seems that thw Aust/. maker of Quicken delibeartly wion't support macs-so non u user ioyurside the uk/us would have to use AW for finances, becuase theree would be no qyickweb fdor mac here and in Nz and other countyries.
 
I use MS Money on my PC; haven't switched my finances to Mac yet, but I wouldn't buy anything by Intuit in any event. I've been using Intuit's Turbo Tax for ten years. This year they incorporated a DRM component that puts a nasty little viper called SafeCast (formally C-Dilla) on your machine. In Win XP it runs even when you're not running Turbo Tax, chewing up roughly 1mb of memory - permanently (unless you manually remove the program - separately from TT; most people don't realize its there to begin with, so it's going to reside on most users machines indefinitely. It also writes to an "undocumented" sector on your hard drive, using it as a sort of scratch pad for the the DRM license. So maybe we should be glad Intuit is leaving us alone....
 
I am considering switching from a pc to a mac and one of the important tasks that i do on my comp is finances. I currently have a win98 running quicken2003. I need a better machine and am looking at mac but this talk of lousy financial software makes me concerned. Should I run win software on virtual pc? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Originally posted by guyute
I am considering switching from a pc to a mac and one of the important tasks that i do on my comp is finances. I currently have a win98 running quicken2003. I need a better machine and am looking at mac but this talk of lousy financial software makes me concerned. Should I run win software on virtual pc? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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The main complaint here was about Quickbooks. Although Quicken had a complaint too.

If you buy a Pro Mac (Powerbook, PowerMac) Quickbooks comes free with your computer. If you buy a consumer Mac (iBook, iMac, eMac) Quicken 2004 Deluxe come free with your Mac. I can't imagine that Apple would bundle software on the computers they sell if it was that bad.
 
I believe that AccountEdge was just released in a multiple user version, if anyone wants to jump ship.

Ironically, I understand that it's distributed by Intuit in Canada.
 
I kept my old pc simply to run Money. I can't seem to get it to connect to my bank thru Virtual PC (has anyone? can you shed some light?). If i could do that I'd just get rid of my PC.

Quicken sucks and my bank doesn't support it.

macboyX
 
I've just finished entering a couple thousand transaction from my checking account over the last few years into Quicken 2004. It ok for some things, but has some serious "cons", such as the inability to connect to Ameritrade and other financial institutions. Is this a problem with the Bank not supporting the "mac version", or is it that Intuit decided not to include such support? Seems to me that it would be up to Intuit. Why does the bank have to know what type of computer is connecting to it? Seems like you could even write the program to "fake the bank" and make it think it's a PC instead of a Mac.

So, I'm wondering why not just write my own personal finance program in FileMaker/4D/or some sql database or something. Seems like this would provide me with allow lots of flesibility to extend the database or link records to other information.
 
No Quicken for UK

We don't even have the choice of whether to use Quiken or not as they don't sell it over here for the Mac. Sounds like we are not missing much though....

I did a lot of searching for a suitable finance program (used MS Money on the PC), most still seem to be Works In Progress.

I've settled on MoneyDance (even registered it), this uses Java so it does take a little while to load. But it is quite full featured and has automatic transactions and supports transfer of funds from one account to another.

It doesn't have online support for my bank, but that's understandable. The bank supports MS Money, Excel and Sage.

Take a look at:
Moneydance
 
Originally posted by bousozoku
I believe that AccountEdge was just released in a multiple user version, if anyone wants to jump ship.

Ironically, I understand that it's distributed by Intuit in Canada.
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Nothing wrong with MYOB -- though AccountEdge may be a little bit too much of a real accounting program for some people, when somebody is looking for a business checkbook program.

Haven't looked at FirstEdge though.

But MYOB AccountEdge is a great program once somebody takes you through it setting up the accounts and balancing the books.
 
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