Yes, it means acquiring a copy of Windows and yet another copy of Quicken, but it does provide you with a version of Quicken that’s more feature-packed than the one Intuit’s shipping for the Mac, you’re likely to get new features sooner with a Windows version, and, unlike with your current situation, your copy of the application won’t go the way of the dodo because of an operating system upgrade.
I find it odd that of the many solutions offered here in Breen’s piece, none of them is “dump Quicken.” He spells out the options of sticking with Snow Leopard rather than upgrading, dual booting from two OS X versions, complaining about Apple dumping Rosetta in vain, and installing Windows via Boot Camp or virtualization software and then running Quicken through Windows. But nowhere does he mention what is to me the best alternative. Keep moving forward, and dump any software that doesn’t keep up with the times.
If Intuit is too stupid, too arrogant, too in control of this market to see an obvious trend towards Apple’s products, then they deserve to go the way of the dodo. Instead we’re rewarding them for their lack of vision.
Now, I understand Breen’s position, because a lot of his readers no doubt really do feel with products like Quicken that there aren’t any viable alternatives. It’s fair to explore a Windows partition as one alternative to this situation.
But before screwing up every other aspect of my computer workflow, installing alternate operating systems, sacrificing file space, peace of mind, the latest and greatest features etc.—before embarking on anything that inconvenient, I’d make DAMN sure there truly weren’t any viable alternatives.
Heck, I’ll do my finances with an abacus and pencil before I let Quicken take my iMac hostage in this way. Maybe I’m in the minority of Macworld readers who would agree, but why not at least mention the possibility?
Intuit clearly doesn’t care about Mac users. That message is clear. So how many years does this inconvenient kludge of a solution buy you? How long do you put up with Quicken through VMWare and Windows before finally realizing that you have to move on? If Quicken isn’t bothering to keep its Mac version up to date in the face of the Mac’s consistent outpacing the industry in growth, what are the chances Quicken will ever make it to the iPad, which will likely be our main computers a few years from now? Are we going to keep an old PC in the garage running just to keep Quicken alive?
My point is, sooner or later you’ll give up Quicken. Why not do it now?
Extinction is part of the natural evolution of the software industry. Don’t help products marked for extinction limp along; kill them faster, and better alternatives will appear sooner.
Me, I’m already looking for replacements for Photoshop and Illustrator, two programs that I rely on every day, which aren’t nearly as behind the Mac curve as Quicken, but that I’d love to see dead sooner rather than later. Why? Not because I hate Adobe, but because these products have thrived too long because they are a necessity, rather than a benefit to the ecosystem. They are holding back innovation, plain and simple. And the more we finance them, the longer they live to abuse us. Who knows how many years it will take before Photoshop takes advantage of any of these cool new Lion technologies: Versions, Auto-Save, iCloud, etc.?
I don’t plan on sitting around to find out. I may not have found my “Photoshop killer” yet, but I’m investing in all the alternatives, encouraging them to keep working on it.
