Product Dissatisfaction (edited)

pccook

I absolutely hate the latest version of this software. I feel I was forced to upgrade (downgrade?). I have been using Quicken for Mac for at least 20 years-most recently Quicken 2007. In the latest version I can no longer perform the most basic functions like hiding a security or transferring money from a brokerage account to my checking account.

jacobs

@pccookFirst, you can easily transfer funds from a brokerage account to a checking account. Create a new transaction, and select Type=Payment/Deposit. That will display a Transfer column, and you can select your checking account for the transfer. 

Second, you can continue using Quicken 2007, so long as you don't upgrade your mac operating system beyond Mojave, after this fall, you enter transactions manually. If that doesn't suit you, then Quicken 2019 is an option -- but if you really hate it, you could also move to something you like better and feel better meets your needs.

There are a lot of us who have used Quicken for Mac for decades. To me, Quicken 2019 is better than Quicken 2007 in some ways, and less capable in other ways. Do I wish it had a number of features that Quicken 2007 did? You bet. But Quicken 2007 was built around software technology which couldn't move forward. I've been watching the development of the modern Quicken Mac since it debuted nearly five years ago, and the positive I see is that things are getting progressively better. Slowly, to be sure. But better. But if it doesn't work well enough for you, and you can find something that better meets your needs, go for it.

smayer97

BTW, keep in mind that as long as you do not have a need to upgrade to Catalina, QM2007 will continue to work in manual mode in macOS up to Mojave (10.14). But if you do need to upgrade, consider using a VM (virtual machine). Though it is not for everyone, it may be a viable option to be able to run a version of macOS that is compatible with QM2007 on top of Catalina.

If you do venture to do this, please add your experiences on the following thread:
Share your experience running QM2007 in a Virtual Machine (VM)

jacobs

@pccookFirst, you can easily transfer funds from a brokerage account to a checking account. Create a new transaction, and select Type=Payment/Deposit. That will display a Transfer column, and you can select your checking account for the transfer. 

Second, you can continue using Quicken 2007, so long as you don't upgrade your mac operating system beyond Mojave, after this fall, you enter transactions manually. If that doesn't suit you, then Quicken 2019 is an option -- but if you really hate it, you could also move to something you like better and feel better meets your needs.

There are a lot of us who have used Quicken for Mac for decades. To me, Quicken 2019 is better than Quicken 2007 in some ways, and less capable in other ways. Do I wish it had a number of features that Quicken 2007 did? You bet. But Quicken 2007 was built around software technology which couldn't move forward. I've been watching the development of the modern Quicken Mac since it debuted nearly five years ago, and the positive I see is that things are getting progressively better. Slowly, to be sure. But better. But if it doesn't work well enough for you, and you can find something that better meets your needs, go for it.

hkdrmd

I must agree with the initial post. Software technology is one thing. Software capability another. I see no reason why some software "engineer" felt compelled to change the capability. A straightforward re-port with all the look and feel of 2007 would have been just fine. Sorry. 2017 is clunk-ware to me.

jacobs

It couldn't just be "ported"; it had to be re-created from scratch. Quicken 2007 used a unique database that can't be replicated, and it drew to the screen using QuickDraw technology that's a decade-plus obsolete, just to name a few issues. Quicken 2007 was the culmination of more than two decades of programming work, and it couldn't be easily re-created. And as is often the case with old software, there are patches on top of patches on top of patches that can be hard to reverse engineer or to determine what a section of code was accomplishing, or even why a particular feature existed.

Could they have made design decisions along the way that would have made some things work more like Quicken 2007 or Quicken Windows? No doubt they could have, but that might have entailed omitting current elements of user interface design, or spending months hand-coding something a call to the modern operating system could get implemented in just days. The two-line acocunt register is an example: the Mac's operating system provides tools for displaying scrolling lists like the current account registers, but creating the two-line register like Quicken 2007 would have meant bypassing the operating system tools and building a custom approach to screen drawing. And while some people miss the two-line display, I have come to really like the smooth scrolling much better than Quicken 2007, and I like being able to adjust my columns far more than I could in Quicken 2007. But that's just to give an example that just implementing the exact look and feel of a 20+ year-old application may not have been the best approach.

In any case, we could debate the decisions made by the developers and managers at Intuit back more than a decade ago ad nauseum, but it's not helpful to where things are now. No one can roll back the clock and start over. So, for me, the issue is zeroing in on what's missing and what's not good with the new Quicken and pushing on the developers to tackle those area. And that includes making sure we know if there's a different, but acceptable, way of doing things in Quicken 2019. For instance, the original poster above complained that there is no way to transfer money from a brokerage account to a checking account -- but there is; he probably just didn't know how to accomplish it. 

I'm not trying to convince anyone they should just blindly like Quicken 2019. It certainly has its shortcomings, and even the developers acknowledge it will take more time for them to implement the many features users are still asking for. Each user has to decide if what's here today is good enough for their needs, and/or if they feel things are headed in the right direction. If not, try to find something that better meets your needs. Or set up a Mac with virtual machine software that can run an older macOS and enable you to continue to use Quicken 2007 manually for the foreseeable future. 

smayer97

jacobs said:

It couldn't just be "ported"; it had to be re-created from scratch. Quicken 2007 used a unique database that can't be replicated, and it drew to the screen using QuickDraw technology that's a decade-plus obsolete, just to name a few issues. ...

Just some fun tidbits:
QuickDraw is as old as the Mac (1984). In fact, it has its origins with the Apple Lisa that predates it. Color QuickDraw was introduced in 1987 with the Mac II. It was deprecated in 2005 with Mac OS X 10.4 and could not longer effectively be added to new development as of Mac OS X 10.8 but the underpinnings has hung around until now. Since it is 32-bit based, and QM2007 apparently relies heavily on it (probably among other 32-bit code), it could not live on into the next macOS, Catalina, which will do away with compatibility with 32-bit code. So, true, a simply port of QM2007 would not likely have been feasible.

That said, I do wish they did not try to re-invent the wheel on every "new" feature they re-introduce into the new QMac that already exists in QM2007. I think that may also be behind the sentiment by many. Many things simply just work well in QM2007 and would do so equally in the new QMac. 

smayer97

BTW, keep in mind that as long as you do not have a need to upgrade to Catalina, QM2007 will continue to work in manual mode in macOS up to Mojave (10.14). But if you do need to upgrade, consider using a VM (virtual machine). Though it is not for everyone, it may be a viable option to be able to run a version of macOS that is compatible with QM2007 on top of Catalina.

If you do venture to do this, please add your experiences on the following thread:
Share your experience running QM2007 in a Virtual Machine (VM)