For those of you who use Quicken for Mac versions 2005, 2006, or 2007 (2007 was the last “REAL” full version of Quicken), Intuit has some important news for you: Don’t upgrade to Lion (10.7)! In an official message from Intuit on Quicken, full versions of Quicken for Mac will no longer work with the next release of the Mac OS. PERIOD!
But there is Quicken Essentials you say, I will just upgrade? You are correct, that is an option, and that version will indeed work on Lion. But be aware that this is, in my opinion, a very poor crippled version of Quicken for those who only need the most basic of Quicken functions. Lost in Essentials is ANY ability to track investments. Also missing is the ability to create a good number of the financial reports you might need to do your taxes at the end of the year, or just track your financial status. And bill pay from the app is gone! Also, Essentials was essentially written from the ground up, they started over, so things are not the same as you are used to, and it just does not feel the same to me. In my opinion, Intuit made it quite clear that supporting the Mac with a full version of Quicken was off the table. After all, their last full version came out in 2007.
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Quicken 2004 for Macintosh OS-X
Company: Intuit
Price: $69.95 retail
http://www.intuit.com/
In my review of the MacWorld trade show earlier this year, I took a cheap shot at Intuit and Quicken, basically saying that Quicken 2004 was a release to forget. I said on initial use, there were serious problems using the new software that may leave some users stuck at Quicken 2003. But as it turns out, this problem only affects a small percentage of the existing users (like me), so I decided to take a second, closer look. Perhaps the ugly work-around may be worth the time. Stick with me here as I am writing this as I investigate
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TurboTax 2003 Deluxe for Mac
Company: Intuit
Price: $50 (discounts are often available)
http://www.intuit.comIt’s that time of year again, friends. TurboTax Deluxe 2003 for Mac contains changes and improvements that will affect both how you enter your financial data and how you look ahead to potential tax savings for 2004 and beyond. Newcomers to TurboTax initially will be perplexed and annoyed at the powerful application’s way of proceeding through its Easy Step data entry process. They’ll agree with me that upon completion the labyrinthian journey was worthwhile.
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TurboTax Deluxe Macintosh
2002 Tax Year – Federal and State
Company: Intuit
Price: $49.95
http://www.turbotax.com
Timing is everything, right? When reviewing annual income tax software it’s difficult to complete a product evaluation before finishing the tax returns. In previous years we have attempted to present either:
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QuickBooks Pro 4.0
Company: Intuit
Estimated Price: $199.99
If you have needs that go beyond simple bank account records, and Quicken is not enough, then this is the program for you! Feature rich, but the ease of use makes all of them even better. Many programs that have every feature under the sun tend to be cryptic and hard to use, like they were created for the Wintel environment. As Mac users, we tend to have easier to use products, and QuickBooks Pro 4.0 is one of them. (Although it is also available to the Windows side.)
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