Converting from Window to Mac

Question

If I convert my Quicken from Windows to Mac will do I lose any meaningful functionality?

Ronin · Answer

Thanks for sharing @jacobs! This is really helpful perspective for me to add to the mix.

I would love to test drive a mac at some point. Not sure about rentals, but Costco may allow for a 90 return policy so that might be worth a look.

I might repost my message above to the Windows portion of the Community so see if anyone on that side has perspective.

jacobs · Answer

I'm a longtime Mac user, so I can't answer from the perspective of a Windows user, but I'll chime in. I do think the stability of Quicken Mac is one of is often unheralded strengths. I used to use the legacy Quicken Mac app (Quicken 2007 at the end of its life), and one of my concerns with it as my data file grew and the software aged was that it crashed not infrequently. Most times, it was a simple matter to relaunch and ru a maintenance routine to rebuild the database indexes, but on more than on occasion, I suffered some data loss/corruption. Since moving to Quicken Mac, and its modern SQL database, those concerns are gone. That's not to say something can't go wrong; something can go wrong with any software or hardware. But I find Quicken Mac is rock-solid reliable. (There isn't even a database repair utility, as there was in the old Quicken Mac and in Quicken Windows, because it's not needed.)

The current Quicken Mac started development back more than a decade ago and came to market as Quicken Essentials in 2010. It lacked many key features Quicken users were accustomed to, but it had a solid foundation. When the current Mac development tam began work around 2013, they had to rip out and replace some significant parts of the Quicken Essentials code to modernize it yet again to work with the latest changes to the Mac operating system. When Quicken Mac came to market as Quicken 2015, it still laced a lot of functionality, but it had a modern code base which could grow with the Mac operating system. When Apple started the switch away from Intel to its M1 hardware last year, Quicken Mac was easily updated to run natively on the M1 Macs from the day they came to market.

There are still many features, large and small, which Quicken users are waiting/hoping to see added to Quicken Mac. Development of new features is slow, but if you compare the current Quicken Mac to the program 2 or 4 or 6 years ago, you'd see that it has improved by leaps and bounds. I haven't seen anything to lead me to think this won't continue. The developers know where most of the pain points are, where Quicken Mac is missing capabilities compared to Quicken Windows or the legacy Quicken Mac; I feel they're continuing to make solid progress, although it's slow going to add literally hundreds of things users have asked for.

So in terms of the foundation, stability and future of the platform, I don't think you can go wrong with Quicken Mac. The question is whether there are any features you use in Quicken Windows which don't exist in Quicken Mac which would be a big enough obstacle to block you from switching. That's ultimately something only you can determine; we all use Quicken differently, and what might seem like a minor issue or non-issue to me might be a big one for you, and vice versa. The best way to figure this out is to try converting your data on a Mac and working with it for a bit. That's tricky if you don't have a Mac and your purchase of one depends on whether you can use Quicken Mac successfully; it's something of a Catch-22.  Do you know anyone who has a spare/old Mac you could borrow for a few weeks to try it? Or can you find a retailer of Macs who will let you return it within a month if you're not satisfied? Or who does short-term computer rentals?

Ronin · Answer

I too am contemplating migrating from Windows to Mac, but for years have considered moving from Q-WIN to Q-MAC to be too significant of a step backwards and I didn't want to bother running Windows in a VM just to run Q-WIN on a Mac.

As time has passed, my thinking has evolved to the point where now I'm fairly convinced Q-MAC has the functionality that matters to me and on top of that perhaps a growing advantage -- stability. Unless I'm misinformed, I take it the current version of Q-MAC that supports the M1 chip is a fairly modern app built on relatively new code/tools, whereas Q-WIN is built on multiple decades-old layers of legacy code that seems to make basic operations (opening files, checking for updates, running One-Step updates) unreliable and unpredictable. Overall it seems Q-WIN has become less stable with time, making me think  Q-MAC may actually be the better solution for me at this point.

I would welcome any perspective from others on this.

Thanks.