continuing on Quicken subscription with Monterey OS

Question

I have an up-to-date Monterey OS on my MacBook Pro and have no intention of buying a new laptop at the moment.  Quicken says they will not longer support Monterey.  What is the point of me continuing to subscribe to Quicken if they can't update the product on my computer?  pros/cons?

Thanks.

Jon · Accepted Answer

They haven't dropped Monterey support just yet, though it will happen soon. When it does, you should be able to continue using the last version that does work with Monterey for some time before you start running into problems. Nobody can say for certain when that will happen, my guess is you have at least another year or two of unofficial support before you are faced with that.

jacobs · Accepted Answer

Apple provides support — and security patches — for three versions of its macOS. That generally means it supports Macs up to 8 or 9 years old. (You apparently have a Mac from 2017 or earlier if you can't upgrade beyond Monterey.) Users can continue to user older versions of macOS, but over time, it becomes a greater risk because hackers and malware authors seek security vulnerabilities in unpatched older operating systems. Quicken officially follows Apple, supporting the current and two prior versions of operating systems. But the Quicken Mac team gives users additional time by supporting one or sometimes two older operating systems; currently the current macOS and the four prior macOS versions are supported. But that means they have to do extra testing of each release, and keep around older Macs to run those older operating systems, to do that testing. That's expensive for a small company like Quicken. And it also means that when the programmers want to use the latest Apple tools and technologies, they may not be able to make certain features work on Macs running the older operating systems. So that's why they drop support for older operating systems no longer supported by Apple.

You ask: so why continue to subscribe if you have an old Mac which cannot be upgraded to one of the three latest macOS versions? If you drop your subscription, it means a few things will happen if you continue to use Quicken: (1) You'll lose access to all Quicken connected services. That means no connectivity to your financial institutions. You can't even download a QFX file to your computer and import it, because all imported transactions go through Quicken online services for renaming and categorization. If you're okay entering all your transactions manually (and many people do), you can keep using Quicken. (2) You'll get a banner at the top and an obnoxious ad down the right side of your screen telling you to upgrade. I don't like that heavy-handed approach by Quicken management, but they decided many years ago that this was their best way to get people to continue subscribing, and they run on subscription revenue. (3) You lose access to (human) Quicken Support should you run into problems.

@Jon has already addressed the other option: continue to use Quicken, and continue to pay for a subscription. You won't get new features or fixes, but you'll avoid the renewal banner and you'll continue to be able to download transactions from your financial institutions… at least for a while.

The Quicken Mac team made the announcement that they will be discontinuing support for Monterey "soon" in the latest release. I believe that likely means the next release (8.5), likely in February, will probaby come with a notice that it is the last release which will run on Monterey. And the next release after that (8.6 or 9.0, depending how they number it), likely in April, will then require macOS Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia or Tahoe. The Quicken you have at that time will continue to run on your current computer and OS. If you have a subscription, at some unknown point in the future, there will be some change in their back-end servers which won't work with the old, discontinued version of Quicken Mac; that could happen immediately, if they have a pending security or architecture change across the company, or it might not happen for a year or two. And if you don't have a subscription, that will be moot because you will be cut off from any Quicken services, but you can continue using it manually pretty much indefinitely.

I hope that adds a little more information and context to the interactions between older computers, older operating systems, and current software.