“Just over a year ago, H&R Block announced that it had decided to cease the development and sales of its TaxCut software for the Mac. At the time, they cited ‘small participation from Mac users’ as the reason for discontinuing the software, which may have been true since many Mac users report using TurboTax’s software instead (or, you know, actually do it on paper or go to an accountant),” Jacqui Cheng reports for Infinite Loop.
Cheng reports, “Either way, H&R Block has apparently had a change of heart on the topic, as they have now re-released TaxCut for the Mac with a new and improved version of the software.”
Full article here.
System Requirements:
• Mac: OS X (10.3.9 or newer)
• 128 MB RAM for OS X 10.3.9
• 256 MB RAM for OS X 10.4.x
• Safari 1.3.2
• Disk Space: 170 MB
TaxCut products for Apple Macintosh: http://www.taxcut.com/mac/index.html
FSCK H&R Block for stopping their support in the first place. Macintosh market share has been increasing steadily for years now. They are either lazy, stupid, or liars or some combination thereof.
There’s nothing that says “I love to have you as our customer” quite like abandonment. As crappy as Intuit’s attitude towards Mac users, they’ve stuck with us all these years. You can always look forward to an over-priced TurboTax next year that can import the tax info from last year. So if H&R decides to leave the Mac market again next year, you’d have to re-input everything into TurboTax.
I hope it’s better than TurboTax. The 2005 version of TT was awful. I had to mail in my returns via snail-mail due to bugs in TT ’05.
I don’t really understand why Tax software exists. Filing taxes is the perfect web app. I myself have been filing taxes online for 4 years now. Its easy, quick and works on any OS. It just doesn’t make any sense to have OS dependent tax software, especially as its a one use thing, which you have to replace it every year.
So yes, I’ve been doing my Taxes on my Mac for 4 years now, with an online service, and it works very nicely thank you.
Its pretty clear that the rising market share of the Mac has caught their attention. If market share had continued to decline, I doubt we would have seen this.
The year after they dumped their Mac version, they had the audacity to send me 2 free copies of TaxCut for Windows, as if that would do me any good!
I won’t invite them back to MY Mac.
We started using TaxCut when they made it free the first year it came out. We were satisfied with it until they stopped making it. We weren’t comfortable sending our information to a web site, so we used TurboTax last year. It’s not nearly as nice. I can say for sure we’ll have a copy of TaxCut for this year unless there is a problem running it on our Mac Pro.
MDN Magic Word – blood – if you’ve got to give blood money to the government at least you can do it with your Mac
Bump those mugs!
I won’t go back unless there’s some compelling reason. After last year’s abandonment I had to use TurboTax. It sported a cleaner user interface. Plus, the 2003 H&R version was late with the final update. The product support helpline had only one person who was skilled with Macs. If they want my business, they better come a-courtin’ with flowers, candy, and some other financial incentive(s) as well.
I have to disagree with those who would put H&R in the penalty box forever because of the bad business decision they made last year.
They clearly realize they made a mistake and, to their credit, it only took them one year to reverse their decision. Moreover, by my reading, all of the H&R products are available for both platforms, unlike Intuit which has TT products that are Windows-only. I have always preferred TC over TT, and plan to buy it again.
There will be more software products coming back to Mac as the market share increases. I think it’s better to welcome them back, as opposed to skewering them for leaving in the first place.
My .02
This is huge, even if TaxCut is a huge pile of $#!+ that no one wants. It means the rising Mac market share is getting noticed by software vendors and service providers.
Remember, as fast the Mac’s overall market share numbers are climbing, their consumer market share is probably climbing even faster. I don’t know that anyone’s done a study of the consumer computer market, omitting sales of PCs to businesses. I would guess Apple’s share of that market is pretty decent and getting bigger really fast.
While I agree with calpundit to a certain extent, in that it’s generally better to welcome returning developers than to shun them, in this particular example customers have good reason to be cautious.
Changing from one type of financial software to another involves a great deal of effort on the part of the user. If H&R Block were able to dump Macs so readily a year ago, how are customers going to be convinced that they won’t come to a similar decision is another few years ?
For those who have found alternatives, switching back might again not be such an attractive idea.
Intuit is much more evil than H&R — Intuit DID drop all of their products for the Mac, and it took Steve Jobs to give them a sneak peek of the new iMac (back in 1998) to get Intuit to start developing for Mac again. Furthermore, Intuit charges banks EXTRA MONEY to support Mac users for online banking, and Intuit’s products have NEVER had feature parity between Mac & Windows — the Windows products are always lightyears ahead of the Mac products. INTUIT (not H&R) is one of the worst companies ever when it comes to Mac support.
I agree, Intuit is a steaming pile of feces. Unfortunately I’m stuck with them since I want to use OS X native personal accounting software (as opposed to running something else that’s Windows based in Parallels/Boot Camp).
I’ve been happy just doing it online with the web-based version of turbotax.
i’ll never use H&R since i tried there software a couple years ago. i was ready to file the first week of Feb, but the software wouldn’t let me file until it could download the latest tax code update. well that was 3 WEEKS LATER!!! i kept waiting day after day, but kept saying update not available yet. so i just went o TurboTax Online and was done in a couple hours…
that’s ridiculous to not have your software ready when it’s perfectly ready, time wise, to file taxes.
There may be many fair weather friends returning to the fold now that Apple is the darling of the dancehall. It’s not like they’re doing Mac users a favor! If this product is good, people will use it. If not, not. No mystery.
I have been using Turbotax primarily because it can receive data directly from my discount broker. But I find the general interface and navigation confusing and not INTUITive at times, though. Anyone tried both and liked Taxcut better? Can the Mac version communicate well with many financial institutions?
Yeah, I’ve used TT for years, and I’ve gotten totally MS’ed* to them. Does Tax Cut import TT records or vice versa? Cause TT05 blew some big chunks, and it’s all just been lipstick on an OS 9 pig for quite some time anyway.
-c
MW: ‘services’ (beget lock-in)
*MS’ed (v. em-ES-ed) is a term very recently invented by Chrissy to describe the phenomenon inertia plays on computing and information technology, whereby the user becomes accustomed to a particular piece of software or other IT solution and is likely to stay with that software even if superior solutions become available, as long as said superior solution falls within an arbitrary threshold (the “MS’ed-ness”) that the user would have to overcome to switch to said solution.
For example, if a user runs the Windows™ operating system and all her applications are written only for said system, then she has an infinite level of MS’ed-ness.
If, however, another operating system or platform becomes available to accommodate or even replace her system, then this threshold begins to decrease. Once it has fallen to a level that enables her to change over completely to a new system, with minimal expense and effort on her part, then her MS’ed level drops to zero.
I been using Taxactonline for the past few years on my mac without a problem. It’s all online based and all my info just carry over from year to year. It just cost $9.99..
H&R and Intuit are both steaming piles of crap. Hard to decide which stinks worse.
Intuit’s Mac version of QuickBooks is inferior to their PC version. They have gone to a yearly release business model, making you pay for trivial improvements in the software. Likewise, their Mac tax preparation software costs more for less.
It’s time for a new vendor to make a serious push into this business area, and displace these two most foul PC-centric vendors.
“I don’t really understand why Tax software exists. Filing taxes is the perfect web app.”
I agree. However, for the past two year we could only get dial-up internet (I was unwilling to pay for crappy satellite). Thus we had to use a stand-alone app. Previously I had used the online versions and was quite happy.
God made an accountant to file my taxes.
Funny to see positive notes about Intuit sticking with the Mac. In Canada Intuit did the same thing H&R did in the states. They abandonned the Mac a few years ago. They try to push the mac users off to their on-line product… but there are alot of users who will not embrace the idea of putting all their personal information on a server in someone else’s premises.
In Canada we have a Mac alternative still holding on – TaxTron. They only grudginly embraced OS X recently (!) Their OS9 version was in dire need of a real UI designer, it was an awkward cumbersome thing, but for many of us it was really the only alternative to paper and pencil. Ugh. This year (2006) they seem to have finally abandonned OS9 and moved to X (duh!) but whether they’ve figured out a real UI yet, we’ll have to wait and see.
Intuit (Canada) continues to ignore the Mac – must be thinking it will go away. They’ve certainly burned any cred they had with the Mac community tho’
R.
I used TaxCut for Mac even back in the diskette days, all the way thru 2004. Then, the many bugs in the software forced me to TurboTax in 2005. It was so bad, I hired the Accountant that MikeR mentionted, and it was great. A little bit more money, but I’m satisfied that my complex tax situation was handled correctly.
This year, I’d be open to REVIEWING the software, but as for using it, my life would need to get much simpler.
MW: theres, as in, “There’s Christmas music playing in my home all day”. (smilie)