Why Apple Should Release a Personal Finance Program

So it’s been a few years, and I decided to upgrade to Quicken 2007 the other day. I’ve been really keeping on top of my finances, and I wanted to be sure that I had the best software I could get for this kind of thing. Unfortunately, Quicken 2007 for Mac is pretty darned lame.

Now, just as a Mac application, it’s bad enough. It seems as though it hasn’t really been updated for five or ten years. It feels like a “classic” app, meaning it was written for the old school Mac OS, and was just given a quick change of clothes and some makeup to get it working in OS X. But that’s a terrible shame, because it shows. It feels clunky and it looks ugly.

Even worse, I’ve used Quicken 2007 for Windows. It’s better. It has many more features, looks like it’s been cared for, and it seems more stable. Sure, there’s a few Mac-specific perks that are missing, like .Mac sync’ing and the new dashboard widget. But come on, that doesn’t hold up to all the features you get in the Windows version. Just look on Amazon, where its average rating is somewhere between one and two stars. Not good.

Now I know PC’s are far, far more popular than Macs. But I seriously doubt the Windows version would be that much better if Microsoft didn’t have Money competing with it. A little competition is a good thing! Because there’s no serious competition on the Mac platform, the innovation just isn’t there. Intuit has gotten lazy. I’d love to see Apple do what Microsoft did and make a decent competitor on the Mac platform. If nothing else, I bet Quicken 2008 would be a whole lot better.

Raymond Brigleb

Creative Director, dreamer, partner, father, musician, photographer. Has been known to ride the rails. Pulls one heck of a shot.