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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Intuit has begun offering its entry-level financial management software Quicken Essentials for Mac on the Mac App Store. This is the standard edition of Essentials that has been on sale for quite a while, not a new version -- something Intuit is quick to point out in the description for the software. It's merely a new distribution point.

quickenmacappstore.jpg


Quicken Essentials for Mac, a basic starter edition, helps you manage all of your personal finance in one place, so you can see where you're spending and where you can save. Quicken automatically categorizes your financial transactions, stay on top of bills and helps you set goals so you can save more.

**For Quicken Essentials for Mac users: Please note, this is not a new release of Quicken Essentials for Mac. **
Quicken Essentials does work under OS X Lion, but it is a far cry from Quicken for Mac 2007, which was the last fully-featured version of Quicken released for the Mac platform. Intuit promised last month that a Lion-compatible version of Quicken 2007 would be available for customers by "early spring."

Quicken Essentials for Mac is available for $49.99 on the Mac App Store. [Direct Link]

Thanks Ahan!

Article Link: Intuit Releases Quicken Essentials on Mac App Store
 

jontech

macrumors 6502
Feb 26, 2010
447
204
Hawaii
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I have been using this since the day it came out and it was rough at first over time and many patches it's a stable descent product.
 

Fivepac

macrumors newbie
Oct 17, 2011
3
0
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Quicken User for 20 years. Trust me, wait. Quicken 2007 on Pre-Lion Mac good enough for now. Essentials not up to par. No other consumer product is as good as 2007. I tried but none better. Quickbooks for biz, Settle for no less than quicken for Lion.
 

cybrhippy

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2012
3
0
Tried to convert my parents from the Windows version to the Mac. Aside from the whole convoluted conversion process, which is useless if your PC had died and are restoring from backup files, It is just about impossible for a "normal" user to go thru. Not to mention just about all fields are lost other than date, amount and description.

My mom had a lot of categories and sub-categories. In the end, After paying for QE I ended up just buying Parallel's and an updated version of Quicken for Windows just so she could use that. And the import worked mostly this time.

This was only 3 months ago, So unless there was a magic patch, The software is still useless if you used the older and/or PC version of this software. I am willing to bet there will be nothing but bad reviews w/ an occasional company troll saying something good about it.
 

awinn233

macrumors member
Jan 15, 2003
51
0
FL
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Just use Mint.com or iBank it's not worth waiting for a company that can't keep it's products up to date. 2007 was 5 years ago and they haven't updated since. They obviously don't care about their customers.
 

orytek

macrumors member
Jan 20, 2008
31
12
If you need anything substantial like bill pay or investment tracking,
try MoneyDance or else use the Windows version of Quicken with Parallels or one of the other virtual emulators. There is nothing else out there and Intuit is not going to improve the Mac version. They are barely maintaining the same features on their Windows version.
I use the 2012 for Windows and it works fine but has barely changed since 2009. There is a huge talent void at Intuit and they are not focused on much.
Certainly not Mac users.
 

driftmr2

macrumors member
Nov 13, 2009
68
0
Broomfield, CO
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Mint.com works for me
 

talmy

macrumors 601
Oct 26, 2009
4,725
332
Oregon
I'll chime in as well as to Quicken Essentials being too basic. I've been using Quicken for Windows under Parallels on a server system (so my wife and I can access the program from multiple systems). Used Microsoft Money before that until they left the market. Looked at other applications on the Mac -- none come close to Quicken (or the former Money), unfortunately.
 

ProVideo

macrumors 6502
Jun 28, 2011
497
688
I bought Quicken Essentials the day it came out. After about a week of seeing how much it lacked I got a refund. Seems it is still at it's very basic state and missing much of what Quicken offered, while offering not much more than what the free mint.com has. I wonder if a refund is possible through the Mac App Store for this? I know they gave refunds for FCP X, as I got one of those as well for many of the same reasons. I should probably stop trusting software companies to have their **** together on upgrades, no matter how much their website hypes it up to be an acceptable replacement.
 

johncrab

macrumors 6502
Aug 11, 2011
341
0
Scottsdale, AZ
I bailed three years ago but I am glad to see Intuit finally starting to pay some attention to the Mac market again. Simple economics would tell them that those who can afford a MacBook Pro probably have more assets to manage than a Costco Netbook user and I am stunned it took them so long to figure this out.
 

jsd

macrumors member
Oct 15, 2003
58
0
Orange, CA
I've been using it for a while. I was sick of 2007's crummy interface. Essentials' is generally better. Now after a lot of patches, it's good enough to keep track of all your account balances and does a good job getting transactions from banks. It doesn't have much in the way of historical reporting and of course doesn't have any advanced features like Bill Pay, but I doubt I'd be able to use that anyway. I just have all my utility accounts set to autopay and that works well enough. I miss the net worth graph from Quicken 2007, and it is somewhat annoying that it won't keep track of transactions in investment accounts. I wanted to be able to give it a three-star rating on the App store and complain about some of its shortcomings but of course you can't rate an app if you haven't bought it from the store.

I've checked out all of the competitors. None of them are very good in my opinion. Moneydance 2011 will import transactions from QEM directly and it's powerful, but the interface is absolutely cringeworthy. I especially dislike how the charts get all stretched out if you resize the window.

Pro Tip: if you want to get your transactions out of QEM to use in say, iBank, you can download the free trial of Moneydance, import your QEM file and export to QIF.
 

Promostyle

Contributor
Jul 1, 2002
61
67
Portland, OR
I used Quicken 2007 Mac for 5 years until it was obsoleted by Lion. Quicken Essentials is a terrible waste of time and a DOWNGRADE from Quicken 2007 Mac. I strongly urge anyone considering Quicken Essentials, to look elsewhere. All you will see is negative comments like this - here and everywhere you look. It's TRASH.
 

aristobrat

macrumors G5
Oct 14, 2005
12,292
1,403
I've got pretty basic "financial management" needs. I've got two checkings, one savings, and a few credit card accounts. I want an app that can automatically connect and download new transactions, help me categorize them, and then let me run some reports to see where my money's going.

I love love LOVE Quicken Essentials. It does everything that I need it to, it's been rock solid for me, and unlike Quicken 2007, it looks/acts like a real Mac application.
 

portishead

macrumors 65816
Apr 4, 2007
1,114
2
los angeles
Sorry Intuit, you can't just bail on me during my key money making years. I need the history and usability of just 1 app. I can't keep switching financial apps every few years. You failed me. I've gone to mint.com for a few years now, and it's not perfect, but better than you are.
 

Diode

macrumors 68020
Apr 15, 2004
2,443
124
Washington DC
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Just use Mint.com or iBank it's not worth waiting for a company that can't keep it's products up to date. 2007 was 5 years ago and they haven't updated since. They obviously don't care about their customers.

Quicken owns mint FYI.
 

John.B

macrumors 601
Jan 15, 2008
4,192
705
Holocene Epoch
Intuit has begun offering its entry-level financial management software Quicken Essentials for Mac on the Mac App Store. This is the standard edition of Essentials that has been on sale for quite a while, not a new version -- something Intuit is quick to point out in the description for the software. It's merely a new distribution point.
"Entry level" != "feature parity".

William V. Campbell is an embarrassment to the Apple board of directors.
 

eawmp1

macrumors 601
Feb 19, 2008
4,158
91
FL
Intuit is Apple's Adobe of financial software. Both companies treat Mac users like fools.
 

KPOM

macrumors P6
Oct 23, 2010
18,020
7,862
Quicken owns mint FYI.

That's part of the issue. They want to move people over to Mint, which would be fine, except they don't make it easy to move over historical records from any version of Quicken (Windows or Mac). Plus, with financial information, some people are less likely to trust the cloud.

The same is happening to tax preparation. They are making the CD/download versions more expensive (although at least TurboTax still runs natively on the Mac - its update routine is bad, though), attempting to get everyone onto the online version.
 

Chupa Chupa

macrumors G5
Jul 16, 2002
14,835
7,396
All I can say is Intuit is lucky Apple never banned fart apps because this one is a real stinker.
 

Digitalclips

macrumors 65816
Mar 16, 2006
1,475
36
Sarasota, Florida
Tried to convert my parents from the Windows version to the Mac. Aside from the whole convoluted conversion process, which is useless if your PC had died and are restoring from backup files, It is just about impossible for a "normal" user to go thru. Not to mention just about all fields are lost other than date, amount and description.

My mom had a lot of categories and sub-categories. In the end, After paying for QE I ended up just buying Parallel's and an updated version of Quicken for Windows just so she could use that. And the import worked mostly this time.

This was only 3 months ago, So unless there was a magic patch, The software is still useless if you used the older and/or PC version of this software. I am willing to bet there will be nothing but bad reviews w/ an occasional company troll saying something good about it.

I experienced the exact same nightmare. Why on earth Inuit stopped updating their full products for Mac is a mystery to me especially when the boss is so close to Apple! Isn't he a director ... or was?:mad:

----------

Intuit is Apple's Adobe of financial software. Both companies treat Mac users like fools.

I so totally agree with you and it is so nice to see them left as entrenched monoliths in the rapidly declining PC market ... come on other companies... bring out really awesome iOS and OS X product, the future of computing, to replace Adobe and Inuit.

----------

All I can say is Intuit is lucky Apple never banned fart apps because this one is a real stinker.

LOL good one.

----------

intuit can pound sand. They've crapped on mac users for years. I'm done with them.

+ 1
 

Macbmw

macrumors newbie
Dec 3, 2011
21
0
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For $79.99 I better use account edge from the Mac App store. Account edge is an full flaged accounting software suitable for small business and household. iBank is a good software but lack the flexibility of reports.
 

mjohn1223

macrumors newbie
Jan 28, 2012
1
0
Moneydance?

Has anyone tried Moneydance? It's rated #1 here: http://personal-finance-software-review.toptenreviews.com/mac-personal-finance-software/

However, please note, that Quicken's Essentials is rated #2 here, and, as far as average rating goes, is about the same as MD. 3.5 Stars.

I, too, have long been forced to use a PC, "parallels" type program, in my case, VMWare, because I gave up on the Mac version YEARS ago, like mid-2000s, if my memory serves me correct. I need the feature & functionality robustness that is only available in Qucken's PC version.
 

kytiger

macrumors member
Jul 20, 2011
71
348
Quicken Essentials is Poor

What I don't understand is Intuit's refusal to just port Quicken for Windows straight over to the Mac. With all the people converting to Mac, they are absolutely blowing an opportunity to keep those customers. Essentials is horrible if you're used to the Windows version.

I work for a Fortune 500 company and we spend endless hours trying to figure out how to keep customers and get new ones. Intuit has the answer right in front of them and can't see it.

Usually when this happens it's a great short opportunity for a stock as it shows the company has no clue. Last one that was this obvious was RIM, and you know how that turned out.
 

talmy

macrumors 601
Oct 26, 2009
4,725
332
Oregon

That review site seems to be pretty cursory -- they downgraded Quicken Essentials solely because it doesn't have a corresponding iPad/iPhone app. We all know it has more serious problems than that!

I did look at Moneydance and while it has all the features I need I thought it was very clumsy to use. I spend several hours a week in Quicken and any replacement that would take me twice as long to maneuver in is a "no go". FYI, the late Microsoft Money was by far the easiest to use for a full featured program. IMHO it was the best application program Microsoft ever made.
 
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