Mac Quicken 2007 observations

Posted by Lawrence Haber on November 17, 2008, 2:34 pm

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> Mac Quicken 2007 observations. 15 Nov 2008

> [let me know if I'm wrong with any of these observations. I'm new

> to Quicken but all this is based on my actual experience so far].

> o When a file is opened, there doesn't appear to be a way to inquire

> what file it is. It opens the last file opened, but you may not

> know which one that is. The file name should be displayed in a

> menu line or somewhere.

When you start up Quicken, you can see the file that has been selected,
for a moment on the splash screen. Once that passes, you are correct,
you cannot tell which file was opened. One way to be absolutely sure
which file has been opened is to double click the data file rather than
the appicaltion to start up Quicken.

> o File -> Close - would be a good addition as it doesn't exist.

> To close a file and open another one you File -> Open and assume

> the one you were in is now closed (or with Quicken not running,

> double click on a .qdfm file). I find this odd because many

> programs allow you to open multiple files (e.g. OpenOffice) and

> lets you obviously select which one you are working on.

I would agree that this is odd, you just open the new file without
closing the old.

> o Historical Quote downloads are not robust. e.g. AAPL will NOT get

> a 5 year archive (for me and Quicken support confirms that too)

> it only seems to get 5 quotes! And this has been observed for INTC

> and COMPX but only intermittently!! (seems like a serious bug).

> [When this happens to me now, I go to Google Financial, the stock,

> click on 5 years, click on download csv, and then massage it with

> an emacs macro to put it in proper qif format, and import it into

> my Quicken stock file].

Correct.

> o There is no printed book on the Mac version that one can

> purchase. That I've found, anyway. I have several on the Windows

> version. I eventually had to print out the 477 page guide from

> the program itself to get Mac specific documentation I could

> easily read, study, and refer to.

Correct.

> o Buried in that documentation is a "re-indexing" commmand

> (Option-Command-B) that is recommended before any exports, to

> fix file problems, etc. I only found that in the manual, I don't

> see any menu item to do it that makes it obvious. So it seems it

> is slightly hidden from the user unless they study the manual.

> That doesn't seem right to me.

> o The re-index command often results in a program crash immediately

> after doing the re-indexing. Not good. e.g. a re-index,

> File -> Backup to Disk often (always?) crashes the program. As

> far as I can tell, nothing gets lost when it is reopened, but

> how would I know for sure?

I think that what you have discovered is that Quicken for Mac is a truly
terrible appilcartion that is porrly designed, porrly implemented for
the Mac platform. Intuit in fact recognizes that fact and announced a
complete repalcement but since that news nothing has been seen or heard
from Inutit on this.

Posted by John on November 17, 2008, 7:56 pm

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Lawrence Haber wrote:

> I think that what you have discovered is that Quicken for Mac is a truly

> terrible appilcartion that is porrly designed, porrly implemented for

> the Mac platform. Intuit in fact recognizes that fact and announced a

> complete repalcement but since that news nothing has been seen or heard

> from Inutit on this.

Thanks for the input. But ouch!

Is there a good Mac financial package other than Quicken?

With no progress for so long we can just assume Mac Quicken
is a lost cause? Is there any way to verify that? I am
telling everybody about my Quicken experience, and for some
reason I can never remember to mention Mac when I tell
them its failings.

Thanks!