“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.]
I got tired of Quicken’s idiosyncrasies and forced upgrades a long time ago. Now it’s mint.com for reporting and my bank’s website for paying bills. I love mint.com, which sadly has been purchased by Intuit. They’ve managed not to ruin it yet…
Best financial software for personal use on a Mac? MONEYWELL. period. And they have an iPhone app to go with it. Do some research before falling into this dumb Quicken quagmire.
More FUD from Intuit. Seriously, the time to re-write code was yesterday. The fact they still think they can throw out a bone to prevent users from switching to something else is just absurd. I moved on – so should you.
Ps. To the cheque-writers: feature request/feedback forms are there for a reason.
It is kind of good for Adobe that Intuit are even MORE lazy and whiny.
Just abandon the Mac Intuit. We don’t care.
Is AccountEdge not appealing to QuickBooks sufferers? I don’t use either so I don’t know. But I don’t see it mentioned above. Developer AcclivitySoftware (formerly MYOB) seems to be offering $100 rebate to QuickBooks switchers.
And broadening the debate to cover all of Rosetta-demanding apps, I worry about Eudora (development long since stopped) and Thoth (whiny, pissy Brian Clark won’t move forward because of his personality).
My solution is a two-Mac setup, one of which will keep on running SnowLeopard for email and usenet.
What I find utterly strange and bizarro here is that ROSETTA. is NOT entirely Apple’s software. It is a collaboration with Transitive:
“Rosetta is based on Transitive Corporation’s QuickTransit technology”
From 2005:
The brains behind Apple’s Rosetta: Transitive
Therefore, it would be both Apple AND Transitive who would provide any licensing. And Intuit don’t know this already?
i use Gnucash and generate my own reports by importing the detail transaction report into Numbers and calculate whatever I want. Moneydance and iBank had performance issues with too many transactions.
I agree with most of the other posters, except for the one “Shill” on this thread. Intuits Mac software STINKS BIG time, while their Quicken software is better then their Quickbooks bugware even the best is miserable.
They have tried to add eye candy features, as a reason to buy their upgrades, when all the users really want is a product that works reliably and accurately.
The only reason why Quickbooks came out on the Mac, is because a shareholder was brave enough to suggest that Bill Campbell be removed from the board of directors because of Intuits lack of support for the Mac.
In brief… Intuit wishes the Mac were dead, but as long as they sell a few copies, they will keep it around, but won’t actually make an investment in the platform. Fortunately the world is changing, and leaving windows based systems for OS X, iOS and android, etc. This will help end the Intuit’s dominance of personal accounting.
Intuit is the winner of multiple awards, including Arrogance, Greed, Vice and Avarice
Let Intuit Rot!
“Intuit is the winner of multiple awards, including Arrogance, Greed, Vice and Avarice”
Elegant cruelty.
Of interest to newbies on the subject:
Wikipedia: Intuit
To quote:
“The time after the IPO was marked by rapid growth and culminated with a buyout offer from Microsoft in 1995; at this time Intuit’s market capitalization reached $2 billion. When the buyout fell through because of Department of Justice scrutiny, the company came under intense pressure in late 1990s when Microsoft started to compete vigorously with its core Quicken business.”
What’s left out here is that Intuit was courting Microsoft to take over their company. When approval of the buyout fell through, Intuit were NOT pleased.
Being stuck in the position of competing with Microsoft, they concentrated their product improvement efforts into the Windows platform, not the Mac, where they had very little competition. Thus the effect of the ‘Angst Theory’ whereby competition inspires innovation, in this case on the Windows platform only. Intuit continue to not give a rat’s about the Mac platform, where thankfully small competitors have been arising and taking up the slack. Right now is a great opportunity for one of the small developers to simply take over the market and kick Intuit off the playing field, good riddance.
Moneydance all the way!
Guys, hate to say this but I would pay for Rosetta . My son And i have bought games which we would like to continue to play, as well as kies software for toddlers. What happend now is we are forces to replace with Windows verslons. Basically message: run Windows. Now I really do not like windows but see no alternative. Keep it restricted to app And don’t care about windows for anything else. I appreciate what Apple does, but hey give us users an option.