Version 6.2.2 (Build 602.39004.100)

Chris27

Just got an update for QM. Appreciate the efforts. Runs smooth here.

I have two requests that I sorely need and have been addressed in suggestions:

Reconciliation Report;

Improved Home Screen, i.e. a simple no-click Income and Expenses for the month.

On a 27" iMac the Home Screen wastes a bunch of real estate as it is now.

I am paying the same price as QW. Expect a bit more refinements. I feel you have been at this long enough to achieve greater parody

Thanks

Chris27

Pretty interesting how the devs plan things out. Thanks again.

jacobs

Chris27 said:

I am paying the same price as QW. Expect a bit more refinements. I feel you have been at this long enough to achieve greater parody

Some people feel that Quicken Mac is a parody of Quicken Windows. Here's hoping for more parity.  😂


Seriously, though, there are ongoing improvements to Quicken Mac. Compare it to a year or two or three years ago, and there has been significant progress. Unfortunately, the list of features people want is quite large, and the development team they have doesn't seem capable of adding more than a few things every two or three months. Adding to that challenge is that we al use Quicken differently, so one person's top wishlist item isn't on someone else's Top 50 list. (For instance, I never use the Home screen -- perhaps I would if it were more useful -- and have never printed a report after reconciling my accounts, so your top two requests aren't what I'm clamoring for.) Whether the problem is that the development team for Quicken Mac is too small, or that the code is so complex that there's no quick way to enhance it without breaking existing features, I think the direction of feature improvements is great, but the pace of change leaves us all disappointed. 

The product manager of Quicken Mac said recently that they spent a significant chunk of the first four months of this year making under-the-hood architectural changes which were required as part of initiative to improve the connectivity functionality which so often breaks for many financial institutions. That's likely very necessary work, but it doesn't result in much-desired customer-facing features. He also said he thought we'd like what they're working on for the next revision. (Undoubtedly some people will be happy and some will not be, since they'll complete and release only a handful of new features at a time.)

By the way, when you post in on this site, you're talking to fellow Quicken users and a few Quicken moderators, but generally not to the developers or company management. Only voting and commenting on Idea threads gets passed on to them. 

Chris27

> @jacobs said:
> Some people feel that Quicken Mac is a parody of Quicken Windows. Here's hoping for more parity.  😂
>
>
> Seriously, though, there are ongoing improvements to Quicken Mac. Compare it to a year or two or three years ago, and there has been significant progress. Unfortunately, the list of features people want is quite large, and the development team they have doesn't seem capable of adding more than a few things every two or three months. Adding to that challenge is that we al use Quicken differently, so one person's top wishlist item isn't on someone else's Top 50 list. (For instance, I never use the Home screen -- perhaps I would if it were more useful -- and have never printed a report after reconciling my accounts, so your top two requests aren't what I'm clamoring for.) Whether the problem is that the development team for Quicken Mac is too small, or that the code is so complex that there's no quick way to enhance it without breaking existing features, I think the direction of feature improvements is great, but the pace of change leaves us all disappointed. 
>
> The product manager of Quicken Mac said recently that they spent a significant chunk of the first four months of this year making under-the-hood architectural changes which were required as part of initiative to improve the connectivity functionality which so often breaks for many financial institutions. That's likely very necessary work, but it doesn't result in much-desired customer-facing features. He also said he thought we'd like what they're working on for the next revision. (Undoubtedly some people will be happy and some will not be, since they'll complete and release only a handful of new features at a time.)
>
> By the way, when you post in on this site, you're talking to fellow Quicken users and a few Quicken moderators, but generally not to the developers or company management. Only voting and commenting on Idea threads gets passed on to them. 

Thanks for your comments. The last thing we need is parity with QW. When I ran it it, it was lousy and we know the reasons! QM is a fresh start. I wonder if the devs will muck with it enough that it does become a parody of QW.

I am only asking for two benign features that some of the competitors have. Just two.

jacobs

Chris27 said:

The last thing we need is parity with QW. When I ran it it, it was lousy and we know the reasons! QM is a fresh start. I wonder if the devs will muck with it enough that it does become a parody of QW.

The issues with Quicken Windows and its very old code base are part of the reason the Mac development team has never set out to simply create a copy of Quicken Windows. They re-think every feature from Quicken Windows and well as the legacy Quicken Mac 2007, and they create it in the way they think makes the most sense. Sometimes that's like the legacy versions, somethings it's new and different. (And sometimes, those efforts come out better, and sometimes worse!) The listen to why users want to do something, or how users do something, but aren't constrained to make it work exactly like its predecessors. (There are some features which need to stick to the Quicken Windows way of doing things because both products co-exist with the Quicken mobile app and cloud/web interface.)

Chris27 said:

I am only asking for two benign features that some of the competitors have. Just two.

The problem is that hundreds of other people have each asked for a feature or two, also, so the list of feature requests is quite long! And they can only seem to churn out, on average, a few things per month -- so some "benign" or simple or non-controversial requests have been sitting on the wishlist for years.

The developers try to decide which features expand the functionality of the software the most (e.g. do things that can't be done with workarounds or other processes currently) and/or impact the largest number of users. Then they overlay that with combining requests affecting one particular area of the program, so they aren't constantly re-writing the same areas of code. Then they evaluate how long each project will take, and which members of the development team have the expertise to work on what each feature demands (e.g. database changes, coding changes, user interface changes, etc.). From all those factors, they decide which projects to do when.

It's been gratifying to see the forward progress over the past several years, slow though it is. But it's definitely frustrating to have your top wishes not get attention year after year. 

As for the two you're taking for: (1) A printed reconciliation report seems like it might be relatively easy to implement, and they've been tweaking the reconciliation screens in recent releases, so there's a chance the one might pop up sooner than later. (2) A customizable home screen has been marked as "Planned", so the developers have agreed to tackle this. It's probably a bigger project, and there's no way to know when it will be coming. (I'd guess that what you'll see is a limited first effort release, and then they'll listen to user feedback about what's missing, and make one or two rounds of enhancements. The Mac development team seems to prefer this type of iterative development of features to designing a Cadillac version with all the bells and whistles from Day One, but taking much longer to get out of the lab.)

Chris27

Pretty interesting how the devs plan things out. Thanks again.