“Long-time Mac users who manage their personal finances on their computers have something to fear with the release of Lion right around the corner: Quicken For Mac 2007 (and earlier) will not function on Lion as it stands right now,” Dave Hamilton reports for The Mac Observer. “This is because these versions of Quicken are still running PowerPC code, while Rosetta, Apple’s transparent translation engine that allows PowerPC code to run on Intel Macs, is reportedly NOT going to be included with Mac OS 10.7.”
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“Mr. Patzer explained that the PowerPC codebase for Quicken For Mac 2007 was started decades ago and has many intricacies — including its own custom-built database engine — that are very much PowerPC specific. Simply porting this code over to Intel is not possible and would require a significant amount of work. So much so that Intuit decided to focus those resources on developing an entirely new application, Quicken Essentials for Mac,” Hamilton reports. “Unfortunately, Quicken Essentials’ initial release left a lot of Mac users wanting more — or less, as the case may be — and many folks simply remained with Quicken Mac 2007 despite its older codebase.”
Hamilton reports, “[We chatted] with Aaron Patzer, VP/GM of Intuit’s Personal Finance Group, today about this… Some might ask, ‘why not just get Apple to let us run Rosetta in Lion?’ Apple likely has its own answers to this question, but the good news is that Intuit is working closely with Apple to possibly do just this. The project has been underway for the past few months, with Intuit working to possibly embed specific Rosetta libraries into Quicken For Mac 2007 to get it to run. This is not a simple project and may never come to fruition. Mr. Patzer indicated we would all know that answer by the end of this summer.”
More details and possibilities for users of personal finance apps in the full article here.
MacNN reports, “Patzer’s comments suggest that there is little technical reason why Apple couldn’t include Rosetta with Lion — apart from the company’s desire for users to update to modern technologies and frameworks for the best experience and performance in current systems. It also implies that Apple may be interested in licensing the technology to select companies that would otherwise be unable to offer full 64-bit versions of their apps in the near-term, a goal Apple wants developers to move to as quickly as possible. The company has made it clear to developers for years that Rosetta was a transitional bridge with a limited lifespan, and was only included as an optional install in Snow Leopard for those who needed it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Has a company with more excuses ever had a former president and CEO on Apple’s BoD? Hey, Mr. Campbell, got any pull left at all? Think you could, you know, go to bat for Mac users who, for years now, haven’t been valued enough to even get a native version of Quicken with feature parity to other platforms? It’s a personal finance app, not rocket science.
Apple discontinued the use of PowerPC microprocessors in 2006.
Intuit is a joke. And they’re obviously cheap, too. They don’t need Rosetta, they need a lesson in commitment to a platform. You call Adobe lazy, Mr. Jobs? Why not Intuit? At least Photoshop will run on OS X Lion. Intuit? Indolent is more like it.
Good software companies offer solutions for users, not unending excuses and problems. If Indolent spent half as much time coding as they do making excuses, we would’ve a modern Mac version of Quicken several years ago.
We wouldn’t use Quicken if you paid us. Mac users should look elsewhere for personal finance software, preferably from companies that are committed to the Macintosh, not lazily hoping to apply a band-aid that’ll let them continue to do nothing beyond peddling their stale, old spaghetti code.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
best alternatives?
MoneyWell – http://nothirst.com/
IBank – http://iggsoftware.com/
Both have worked on importing data exported from Quicken, and both have companion apps for iPhone & iPod touch. My mom used Quicken for years, but finally made the switch to iBank last year and is very happy with it.
Can you print checks on these?.
iBank will print checks. However, it seems to default to the ‘wallet’ style of checks. I could force it to print ONE standard voucher style check, but it defaulted for the next…ruining that check. So, it is not practical to use yet and it needs more development before it can take over from Quicken.
Quicken Essentials prints checks very easily now.
Do they perform Bill Pay?
I tried the new Quicken Essentials for Mac when it first debuted, it corrupted my Quicken dat base so I could not even get Quicken to run again. Even wasted 2 hours with Quicken support, and could not get Quicken to run again on my MacBook Pro. Thankfully I had not disposed of my old one and had a time capsule backup. Have been using iBank ever since.
This is just sad. I haven’t had any Rosetta dependency since maybe 2007. I can see relying on some older software for work or whatever. But seriously. Quicken? I’d be pissed if I bought software in 2011 and it was still running PowerPC code.
Congrats on being the last company in the world to adjust to apples six year switch to intel, intuit.
Rosetta is not Apple technology. It was licensed from Transitive, which has since been purchased by IBM.
Ignoring Quicken and their lazy approach. There are plenty of other reasons to run elderly software on a modern Mac. Some software manufacturers went out of business or were brought out and their products orphaned. Being able to open my old files from those apps on a modern Mac is a huge advantage. It means that I don’t need to keep an old Mac lying around to run a legacy app ( and can give that old Mac to a more worthy user ).
Is there a technical reason why Rosetta cannot run on Lion, or is it simply not included in the box ?
Is there likely to be any way to use my existing version of Rosetta when I upgrade my current Mac to Lion ( other than having two operating systems installed ) ?
I make no excuses for Quicken. There’s been ample time to bring their apps up to par (it’s not like this transition started a year ago with respect to PowerPC code).
But I am concerned about the loss of Rosetta. I’ve got a very expensive printer that I simply can’t afford to replace (in the $7,000 range) and it currently relies on Rosetta for its drivers. The company doesn’t appear to be interested in updating drivers for a printer it no longer sells. I probably won’t buy from them again, but it doesn’t the change the fact that I could be forced to keep my shop behind the times just because of a dang driver issue.
It’s frustrating.
I can feel your pain on that one. I have an imagesetter running a RIP that only runs under OS9, which means it only runs on a PPC Mac with PCI slots for it’s proprietary interface card. I’ve still got a couple of Macs around that would fill the shoes, but if that PCI card goes…ouch.
Comments like this, and others I’ve seen around the web on the issue, blow my mind. If you have a business that relies on printing to an expensive printer you can’t afford to replace, I offer a simple solution. Don’t upgrade to Lion. Just keep on running Snow Leopard, which I assume works just fine for you.
Well, yeah. That’s what I’m saying we’ll have to do. And I’m saying it kind of sucks (I like to run the latest and greatest as much as the next guy).
What you have to understand is that our printing services are primarily design based. We use this machine to do some low volume runs where quality needs to be good but not great. It’s not always cost effective to fire up a small press or hire out a print job on a low volume run.
Let’s put it this way, if I could purchase Rosetta for $100 I’d do it. Maybe Apple should sell it that way if it’s it all possible for things like drivers. We aren’t all big companies with endless budgets. In my market and the percentage of my business this printer is used for, it’s exactly what I need. Just has a bummer of a driver that holds back the 90 percent of the rest of the business that could upgrade right away.
Sorry to have blown your mind, though . . .
Why don’t you get an old, cheap PPC Mac specifically for running the printer? You could probably get one for $100 or less.
Sure, it’s a pretty obnoxious solution because you shouldn’t have to do that, but wouldn’t it work?
Sidenote: just how the HELL did Intuit manage to make Quicken 2007 only work on PPC? Is it written in assembly language or something!? Because if you’re using Cocoa… God, even if you’re using Carbon, compiling an app for Intel should be as easy as changing one setting in Xcode. Do they get their programmers from the same chimpanzee exhibit that Adobe does?
Upgrade your main computer to Lion. Hang the printer off of another computer that runs Snow Leopard. Use Print Sharing.
Like MacRadDoc, I tried Quicken Essentials for Mac and, although it did not corrupt my database, it proved to be a dud as a product. Even the name – Essentials – gives it away as a watered down product; it did not provide the kinds of reporting that Quicken 2007 does. So, when I no longer needed that reporting, I switched to iBank. At this point, I couldn’t care less what Intuit does. I’ve had it with their arrogant treatment of Mac users as second class customers.
Quicken Essentials has vastly improved it’s reporting ability, and FYI: many of the reporting features that were “reports” in Q2007, are able to be easily done via the register is Quicken Essentials. You may wish to give it another look.
I haven’t used quicken for probably 13 years, having switched to an envelope based banking app called Budget by snowmint systems. It will import quicken QIF files and works great for what we need. And it has good support for a shareware app and is updated regularly. I have no idea if it is even in the same class as quicken, but there it is…
Simply porting this code over to Intel is not possible and would require a significant amount of work
Well then quit bitchin’ and get to work! I HATE Intuit and they fell off the face of the earth, and I’d be ecstatic!
My bank does a great job of keeping my finances in line with their web site… and its FREE! Why would anyone pay Intuit money is beyond me.
History. I have every transaction since November 1990 when I was using a DOS based version of a product called CheckFree. I’ve managed to convert file formats along the way.
@ rws
Do you have a Mac?
I 100% agree.
Apple announced the transition to Intel based procesors in June of 2005 — over SIX YEARS ago.
If I recall correctly Apple shipped their last PowerPC based desktop or laptop in August of 2006 — amost FIVE YEARS ago.
In six years a respectable set of programmers could have written something equivalent to “Quicken Rental Property Manager 2011” (their most extensive package on the Windows side) from a blank sheet of paper. They could have tossed 100% of the PowerPC code base and be done by now.
Intuit just does NOT want to do it. That is the ONLY reason. Intuit saying that it is too hard or that there is too much PowerPC code is pure BS.
Quicken can’t redo their app in modern Objective-C/Cocoa? If they are reading this, I personally will rewrite their app, including the so-called decades of code and so-called intricacies, for $85,000.00 total. It will take 1-2 months for me to do all by myself. And the custom database they reference? It will be replaced by SQLite which is faster, safer, used by many apps including Safari and would be far better. This is a real offer on the table. I do not want to hear excuses about Rosetta and PowerPC code anymore. Obj-C/Cocoa is not new and Quicken should have done this years ago. Simply utterly ridiculous.
B.S. If you could do that you’d write your own.
@ rws
I have written many commercial software packages and games. Do some research before opening your trap.
“We wouldn’t use Quicken if you paid us. Mac users should look elsewhere for personal finance software, preferably from companies that are committed to the Macintosh, not lazily hoping to apply a band-aid that’ll let them continue to do nothing beyond peddling their stale, old spaghetti code.”
Unfortunately MDN, I have looked elsewhere and nothing comes close to doing what I need for me relatively simple banking needs on the Mac. If you are going to make a statement like that, please do the research and list some of the software that meets your/our requirements and be helpful. Does this mean that I like Intuit? No, it’s sad how they have barely met the needs of Mac users and try to get by by repurposing ancient technology so they can do the minimal work, but there is no other software that does better, so we are stuck. Any suggestions would be welcome on software to replace Quicken.
Ibid.
Of the evil companies, Adobe and Intuit rank right at the top. That I still have to run Windows on Mac solely in order to accommodate Quicken, ticks me off more than anything since I left the Windows world behind. Intuit refuses to support the Mac adequately. Quicken for Mac is a laugh, not supporting major features of the Windows version, and now appears to be left behind with Lion. And I still have not found an adequate substitute in the Mac world that can handle online banking, stock transactions, (very) small business billing, and reports decently. I hate Intuit and will gleefully switch whenever I can find a stabile substitute. After using them for 16 years, with a great deal of historical info involved, it’s not an easy task to switch.
Why does’t Apple make their own financial software? They have been working with Quicken for years to ensure that this software exists on the Mac – back in the day, they included it on all new Macs. This seems like one of the last categories of software that don’t exist on the Mac.
Amen!
I can’t help my venting here. Intuit is THE leading example of a lazy, non-customer focused company. With Quicken, you have options. However, with Quickbooks, not so much. Yes, I know there is AccountEdge. I own several copies. But, the problem is virtually no accountants are familiar with it and there are a couple of features it does not have that are show stoppers for me. I do not understand why this company cannot get their act together and make their 3 Quickbooks products (Mac, Windows and Online) compatible with each other so that a Mac user can operate their business and have all of the features of the Windows version including file compatibility. I mean…FILE COMPATIBILITY??? WTF! That should not be hard.
1000. A fully functional Quickbooks for Mac would mean my wife could go 100% Mac for her business.
What do you feel is missing from Quickbooks for Mac? Quickbooks for Mac is almost on par with the Windows version. It has multi-user access now, which was the biggest problem.
Mostly reports to Accountants stuck in the ’90s.
Not sure what you mean. They do have file compatibility – but they must be recent versions. So, upgrade your Windows version and it will be file compatible. Quickbooks sucks in my opinion anyway, so not sure why your wife can’t go 100% Mac anyways. There are far better web-based accounting systems. Don’t let Quickbooks run your life and make all your decisions based on Quickbooks.
I would pay good money to have Freehand up and running under Lion. However, without Rosetta, this won’t be possible. Illustrator is okay for some things (mainly colour related or because of 3rd party plugins) but unfortunately still doesn’t come close to Freehand’s speed and modeling toolset. Again, thanks so much Adobe for seriously dumbing down my workflow.
Intuit, the creates of Quicken/Quickbook is a major joke!
They want all cakes and eat each one! I hate their stuff esp Enterprise edition!!! And the new way they store notes can make some users break HIPPA laws! And they don’t tell the users that!
I hate dealing with them! Code has a life cycle. The mac side need to be cleaned up! It not impossible to create the core code that can run on both platforms!
FWIW, Quicken Essentials for Mac is a good program. It’s the first Intuit product *finally* feels like a Mac application. Yes, it has fewer features than earlier versions of Quicken, but they have made steady improvement to the app since its release. I used earlier versions of Quicken for Mac, and have tried desperately to switch to something else for years, including iBank, Moneydance, etc. Quicken Essentials was the first finance app I used that, frankly, did not have a deal breaker for me. I’ve been on the app for all of 2011, and am happy with it.
The Mint.com team are the folks behind it, which may have something to do with its polish and promise.
If Intuit would incorporate Bill-Pay in it, I would jump all over it!
I switched to See Finance two months ago knowing that I’d need a Quicken alternative when Lion arrives. I’m very happy so far. It imported 15 years worth of Quicken data perfectly.
Their site says you can’t print checks though.
I tried iBank but they could not correctly import some trading transaction for short sales. They kinda took an Intuit type attitude about addressing it so I stuck with Quicken 2007 and Essentials. I actually use both as one is fast and good enough to download a good overall picture and anything else I do with Quicken 2007. They both suck but what are the alternatives? I must find one before upgrading the OS.
Financial software has always lagged on the Mac. Not only in personal finance but trading platforms. Also, I’d prefer a company that will be in it for the long haul. One posted had the right idea asking Apple to create such software.
Importing was never something I needed, so I love iBank. But when I say that, I mean iBank 3.
IGG recently released iBank 4, and I hated it so much I reverted. The clean, concise interface of iBank 3 became a victim of feature-itis. So, I’m sticking with iBank 3 until it stops working. After that, no idea.
——RM
I bought Quicken for Mac back in 1990s. Then Intuit screwed Mac users later in the 1990s and left me hanging. Around 2004, Intuit jumps half-heartedly back onto the Mac bandwagon when it became clear even to Intuit management that Apple and Mac OS X was on the ascent. Like Adobe, however, Intuit did not care enough to actually rewrite its code.
This is not spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control code. Quicken is financial software. So don’t try to feed me crap about its PPC-specific intricacies and custom database engine. Quicken seems to run OK on Intel processors using Windows. And Windows runs just fine on Intel Macs. Draw your own conclusions, but mine is “screw Intuit.”
While other software makers are porting their software over to the iPad, Intuit is still bitching that it takes too much work to move Quicken to the Intel-Macs.
For Christ-sake Intuit, your TurboTax is coded for Intel-Macs. Your Quickbooks is coded for on Intel-Macs. Hell, even AutoDesk rewrote AutoCAD to run on Intel-Macs and the iPad too!
I’m moving to Lion this summer. If Quicken doesn’t work on it, I’ll be switching to something else–never to return to Intuit again, except at tax time when I need TurboTax. (Oh, that’s right, Intuit bought TurboTax rather than developing it in-house with their crack staff of programmers.
Apple needs to create their own personal finance software and include it in iWork. In the last two years I have had more complaints about Quicken and Quickbooks than any other piece of software.
Apple is overlooking a real opportunity to move a lot of small business owners over to the Mac. In fact, the number one reason among my clients who leave the Mac platform is the lack of full functioned finance software (data compatibility & printing checks).
Intuit has done virtually nothing for its customers since Microsoft ceased to be a competitor. They desperately need a well funded competitor who is serious about providing a first class personal finance solution.
I’ve been venting in this forum about Intuit for years. I stopped using their income tax software and moved to the H&R block because I am so darn pissed at this company and the way they treat their Mac users. I too remain on Quicken 2007 for the cost basis of my investment portfolio, and just can’t stand to give this company one red cent to stay in business and treat their Mac users the way they do.
I can’t for the life of me understand why S. Jobs hasn’t kicked this company in the can as I think they are way worse than Adobe.
I just need banking and investment cost basis tracking. Can anyone in this forum recommend an app to replace quicken 2007???
No, you’re pretty much screwed which is part of the reason people are so pissed. Oh there are attempts like iBank and others but they fall short on needed features for all but the most basic.
You might try MoneyDance. It imports quicken files easily has versions for iPod/Pad that sync-currently via the sync cable.
All this back and forth about Intuit is missing the point. Since there’s no technical reason not to make a Lion compatible version of Rosetta, Apple should make it available to those who need it. Please Apple, don’t screw over long time (20 year) Mac users like me and so many others who need Rosetta to make their living.
My favorite image viewer is a piece of “abandonware” called Xsee. Since development was stopped years and years ago, there is no Intel version. I’ve been running it on Rosetta. When I upgrade to Lion, I’ll have to move to something else, which ticks me off because I haven’t found a cheap image viewer that will just let me browse images without scaling unless I ask for it.
——RM
I hate to say it, Robin, but Microsoft’s Expression Media might be perfect for you.