Customer Reviews

Quicken 2006 (Mac) [Old Version]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

Several years ago, Intuit announced that they were going to discontinue Quicken for the Mac. After a personal phone call from Steve Jobs, the product was saved. Unfortunately, all development work must have still stopped at that time.

Quicken for the Mac has not had a noteworthy upgrade in years. If you are recent "switcher" from a PC to Mac, take note that the Mac version of Quicken does not hold a candle to the PC version. They are quite different products. Quicken for the Mac looks and acts like a product from 1998.

It's too bad because I love my Mac in every way. I just with *someone* made a decent personal finance software product for it.

I've been using Quicken on the Mac since 1988. This version is a major mess from a pretty dysfunctional company. I purchased via the web on 08/01/05. The version was very buggy from the start, crashing on launch virtually every time (under Tiger, if you tell it to relaunch after a crash two times, it automatically trashes a plist and Quicken would then launch until the next time). Many users reported this on the Quicken forums. Not an isolated issue. On 08/5/05 Intuit to their credit updated a patch which seems to have fixed the problem. But this shows how poor Intuit's Q&E and beta testing is. Worse, the company will NOT honor the rebate for those who purchased the product on 08/01 (rebate starts on 08/02). Again, these guys are not thinking!

I plan to use the 30 day money back guarantee and get all my money back. However, I can't go back to Quicken 2005 since all my data files were updated for 2006. I plan to purchase the box here in Amazon so I can at least get my rebate but this is really silly. I don't need a box or manual and Intuit is silly for not simply honoring the rebates for people who purchased the day they released it.

Is the update (it's not really an upgrade) worth it? Well they did speed up downloading transactions (it doesn't download all the institutions every time). The .Mac backup is nice and it works but is that worth $40? There are still bugs even beyond the patch fix. Command Q doesn't always quit the product. When you place your account windows on screen where you wan them, they do not always remain in place after you relaunch. The command to check for updates doesn't work (it pops a dialog saying you need to be connected to the web which I am). So if you're happy with the version you're on, I'm not sure this is money well spent.

Shame, this used to be a fantastic Mac product.

I'm a software engineer, and I've been a Quicken for Macintosh user for 10 years now, religiously accumulating data on every financial transaction I've performed in the last decade. Quicken 2006 is the fourth release of the program I've used. I use Quicken because I want to track my finances, back in 1995 it was the best choice, and at the time it did what I needed. I stuck with Quicken because it was always easier to upgrade to a new release every 3 years than search for other options, and occasionally I would get a free version when I upgraded my computer. I stayed with Quicken through the years they said they were not going to develop for the Mac platform anymore, and through their return to Macintosh support following the popularity of the iMac.

Quicken has got worse, not better, over the years. Intuit has focused most of their energies towards shiny new features for a dwindling portion of their user base in an attempt to encourage users to upgrade. They neglect the user interface, but more importantly they have introduced bugs in the basic functioning of the program: I was prompted to write this review because their Budgeting functions incorrectly total the budget categories. Yes, I'm talking about a bug in the central goal of the budgeting functions, basic arithmetic. I seriously almost accepted a budget I had written before realizing that it was off by hundreds of dollars per month.

In past releases, I have suffered through UI bugs that make it nigh-impossible to get to information I wanted because of scroll bars that are too small to allow clicking on the correct portions of them. Functions have been unavailable because UI bugs have incorrectly made buttons unclickable. The customer support is terrible. Show-stopper bugs literally take years to be fixed. Many of the things that I want to do habitually -- generate graphs and reports, for example -- are possible but cumbersome and annoying because of the number of windows I need to navigate through to accomplish my goal.

The major development of the last few years, integration with online banks and brokerages, is generally a couple of years behind the PC version. I have *usually* been unable to get information from my accounts using Quicken's new features, even though my bank says that they work with Quicken. When pressed, it is revealed that they don't work with the Macintosh version.

I give the product two instead of one star because it does do the central functions you expect it to, tracking a checkbook for example. Quicken is definitely better than nothing at all. But I've finally decided that it's time for me to choose either MoneyDance or iBank and shift to a new program with developers that are responsive to complaints.

Nearly no improvements with all the bugs intact and more. The software crashes 9 out of 10 times upon launch (until you apply the R2 patch). DO NOT upgrade!!! Stick with 2005/2004/2003. In fact, I don't see much difference between 2006 and 2003, except the money they took from me and my time lost dealing with old and new bugs.

The way I see it, Intuit owe me money and an apology.

I used Microsoft Money for years, which made me cringe a bit because of my extreme dislike of Microsoft. I finally wised up and switched to mac which led me to quicken. I thought I would like it but it is awful.

I've had crashes, cannot change print settings for reports and the online help is decent but takes forever.

Don't buy this! I'm ready to go back to my checkbook and pen.

Unless there is another program out there that actually does the rudimentary tasks I need!

EDIT:

After posting this review I did the following (this is from my review of Moneydance):

I looked into three options: Liquid Ledger, iBank and Moneydance. After reading all I could I bought iBank and spent three days setting up my accounts and trying to figure it out.

iBank was a huge improvement over Quicken, but there was no tech support, I had troubles printing my accounts (unless I reduced the columns so that I could fit it on a page, but then I couldn't read what was in those columns!) and it just wasn't intuitive enough for me.

I am probably in the intermediate range of computer users, and I feel certain that someone with more experience than myself would find iBank just fine.

Since it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do (or rather, since I couldn't make it do what I wanted it to do) I decided to buy Moneydance and see if it was better. I think it is an oustanding program -- very easy to set up and use. I was able to set up all my accounts in a morning, where in iBank I was still working on the fundamentals at that point in time. In addition, I have been able to easily configure it how I want it to look.

I still have more to learn about Moneydance. The documentation is a bit less than I'd like, but they are working on more lengthy explanations which hopefully will be out shortly. Even with their overly short instructions I have found no roadblocks. I would give it five stars if there were more and better instructions. Like I said, though, that appears to be arriving shortly.

Another benefit is their chat forums where you can leave questions or, as I have done, search for earlier questions about the same issues. It's a great resource and provides access to the company itself since the programmers seem to be the ones monitoring some of the forums.

I really like this product very much. I found it fairly simple to set up (as simple as I would hoped it would be, anyway) and easy to use. It is, to me, a great alternative to Quicken and I'd look into it as an alternative to iBank as well.

The GUI (the way it looks) for this program is horrible. Seriously, it's confusing and an abomination. It's the exact opposite of most other Mac software - clean and polished and easy to use without reading the help manual. Quicken for Mac is anything but.

I actually bought VPC just to run the windows version on my mac....

The Mac version of Quicken is still a poor example of Intuit's product line, and the 2006 version hasn't fixed any of the annoyances in previous versions. It is still not possible to perform basic necessities like sort your register by 'amount' or by 'payee'. 2006 still also lacks the same effervescence the Windows version has, such as forcing you to type in your online balance and the current date when you reconcile. It will allow you to input your finances, but due to lack of features (and just plain laziness), Quicken for Mac still makes it very difficult to keep track of them once you've put them in. Definitely NOT worth the price.

Of late I have been skipping years between Mac Quicken upgrades, and even doing that, find relatively little changed each time. Perhaps that is why Intuit is happy to force stragglers forward by restricting online banking features to recent releases (although as software developer myself, I do understand the support and maintenance arguments as well). The 2006 release continues in this vein, but I do feel it was a worthwhile investment on its own merits.

My credit union has paid the "Mac tax" Intuit requires in order for their online banking features to interoperate with Quicken, so I am lucky enough to be able to use them. And they work very well. The one-step-update and downloaded transaction windows look nicer and are more responsive compared to the 2004 version, and have some useful new features. For example, the downloaded transactions window's dropdown menu for choosing an online account now provides a visual indication of which accounts contain new transactions. This saves a lot of time in conjunction with one-step updates.

The new flexibility in scheduling calendar-based transactions is useful too. There were things (like my direct-deposit paychecks) which previously couldn't automatically be assigned the right dates. Now they can, and it was easy to fix them.

I'm less impressed with the much hyped "backup to .Mac" feature, however. It's perhaps helpful for people who lack a backup strategy for all their important documents (such as the Backup program which comes with .Mac), but it pales by comparison with what it could and should be: Quicken should take advantage of the Sync Services offered by Tiger and .Mac to let you synchronize your Quicken accounts between multiple computers. I should not have to care whether I'm on my PowerBook at work or my PowerMac at home; transactions I enter in either place should appear on the other. Instead, I can only run Quicken at home and sync with Pocket Quicken on my Treo. (If it weren't for Landware's awesome Pocket Quicken, I would find this limitation even more irksome; Intuit is lucky a third party helped fill this gap, but it makes it even more clear they should be able to do this themselves.)

So, in summary, not a world-altering upgrade, but solid progress on an application I continue to find useful and mostly friendly, with a few quirks and limitations that don't detract from my enjoyment of using it to help manage my finances and pay my bills.

I migrated from a PC to a Mac several months ago. I had used Quicken for Windows for quite a few years, and generally found it to be a very good program. Quicken for Mac, however, is a different bird entirely. First of all, it's difficult to migrate Windows data into the Mac program - the formats are different and Intuit makes no effort to help convert one to the other. Once everything is finally configured, things only get worse. The interface is cluttered and clunky, and things I could do easily on the Windows version are twice as aggravating on the Mac program.

I use Quicken primarily to make online payments. The whole process is more difficult in the Mac version compared to the PC. First of all, the typeface on the register is much to my small for my middle-aged eyes (I might be able to improve on this by changing the screen resolution on my iMac, but why should I have to?) Also, it's a major annoyance that when I enter transactions into the register, I have to catagorize payments to the same payee each time, instead of Quicken remembering, like the Windows version.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, this is the worst program on my Mac (and to think it comes pre-installed on the computer - what a waste of disk space). I am going to set up my old Windows PC in my office again, primarily so I can start using Quicken for Windows once more.

I would never pay a red cent to buy this worthless program.

After 5 years of using Quicken for PC, I made the switch. Here are some highlights of my experience so far.

1. You never have to shut the program down. It will crash every time.

2. Inflexible online options. Quicken for PC was reaching the point where all of your transactions could be downloaded by the touch of one button. Quicken for MAC makes you go to each financial institution and export your transactions, many of which are incompatible with the Tiger OS (so they must be put in manually). Also, I have some accounts that used to work with the online update that no longer work, and no amount of editing options will correct it. Instead, Quicken tries to make up new accounts and the result is a loss of several years of transactions. Very frustrating to say the least.

3. The "Planning" area from Quicken 2005 does not exist in this version. The planning function is a basic calculator that is substandard to entering in information on money.com.

4. The interface is unintuitive and unimpressive.

5. Multiple errors between account values displayed in the overview and account values displayed in detailed account view. Many of them in the overview are zero'd out after moving data from PC to MAC.

Conclusion: Quicken software has not really made the switch to MAC. This program is a cursory attempt to lull business-minded PC owners over to the other side with peace of mind that never materializes.