What makes you think that it would have been done two years ago if they started in 2021?
A total rewrite of Quicken Mac started in 2007 and isn't completely finished to this day.
Then if they do a rewrite, they will most likely raise the price.
Which I had never updated to the annual renewal version, I just automatically updated every 5 years and it said since I had Deluxe I could keep on using without renewing. Well that is true, but it not very usable with all the ads taking up space telling you to renew! Not nice!
Quicken could just sell me a version right before the annual subscription started and just make it a lower price. I use none of the online feature, no longer use any investments- nothing that takes all the resources and new code keeping up with financial institutions.
A good time to have started and done a rewrite of Quicken to make more efficient would have been a point in time when they planned all these new features that many of us don't use. The only thing I use other than recording registers entries is saving goals for projects I work on, but they were in there back in the DOS age. In other words, stop adding features and sell that old version. Have another version totally rewritten designed better to add all the new bells and whistles.
Oh God yes, this please.
As the years go by the issue compounds because Microsoft Windows will eventually drop 32-bit emulation for one reason or another. I doubt the foundational code base Quicken 32-bit relies on is being maintained, too. Microsoft killed off 16-bit emulation at some point - it's factual to presume the same fate awaits 32-bit emulation. The 32-bit nomenclature that "you won't notice a difference with 64 vs. 32" has merits in isolation but mostly it is disingenuous. 64-bit Windows apps run more reliably on 64-bit Windows compared to 32-bit - it has to be by it's very nature and OS architecture. "Compatibility" features introduces latency, fact, always has, always will.
I think it is different this time. Processors went from 16-bit to 32-bit mostly because of the need for more address space. With 64-bits there isn't any compelling reason to go higher (processor wise for anything but the largest server).
If people think forcing people to have computers that have the new security features to run Windows 11 is a big "no go" for people, removing support for 32-bit applications would be disaster for Microsoft.
As for the "latency" it in fact doesn't matter in the least. It is so small comparison to rest of the processing time it isn't the 100th thing one would work on if they were looking to improve the performance of an application.
For Quicken Inc it just wouldn't make any sense. It would take a total rewrite of Quicken Windows, and they just don't have the time or resources for that. And from a business standpoint they would get much more benefit with putting those resources into their online products.
Let's stop making excuse for Quicken developers. I've been a long-time user (Quicken 98) on my first computer. At one time, Quicken had to maintain numerous versions of its software as people did not always upgrade when a new version was released. Quicken solved that problem by going to a subscription-based model. Now, once a new version is completely released, there is only one Quicken version that needs to be maintained. That frees up a lot of developer time. Also, with a subscription model, there is much more certainty as to revenue each and every month. Thus, new features, bug fixes, user enhancements, etc. can be more effectively scheduled and managed.
Quicken has lost a lot of market share as new competitors entered the market using advance software and more powerful coding processes. Intuit took advantage of its user base and stopped making meaningful improvements or even fixing known issues, treating it as a cash cow which drove users away in droves. I have only found one replacement application that comes close. I want my data stored locally, not in the cloud. However, that application suffers from the same developer disease. They have ancient code that today's developers do not understand how it works and built-in baggage such as a non-normalized database that to fix these issues would require a total rewrite. So what do they focus? Refactoring old C++ code into newer C++ libraries while keeping the baggage.
The abacus still functions as a perfectly good calculator, but I don't think anyone would consider using it today. The Quicken core code is some 30 years old. It's time that it gets rewritten to today's coding standards.
Isn't that what we pay for with our subscription?
If Quicken is unwilling to do so, they should be honest with the user base and tells us that Quicken WILL sunset in x number of years so that we can develop our own transition plans.
Of all the things the Quicken developers might work on, a 64-bit version is the least important.
I will note that I for one would be for this idea with one minor change.
If the idea was, "The Quicken developers should profile Quicken and find its bottlenecks and fix them so that Quicken performs better." I could certainly support that.
It is the idea that creating a 64-bit version of Quicken will magically make Quicken better that is wrong.
Since from what I am reading it seems Quicken has never been rewritten since DOS. I was using it back in the DOS days and know what it can do now- took a lot of big changes. Has to be a real coding mess!!! I used to code on mainframes and there was a time we went from a tape system to a disk system, that was a mess. Some of you I bet are saying what was a tape system. Well that was where our data was stored and when you updated, you wrote new date to another tape. Actually, it was a magnetic tape, but there was a paper tape, but I never wrote anything for it. Then we went from sequential to ISAM and on and on- programs were a mess.
So Quicken code must be a real kluge and difficult to change.
The real sad thing is I could still get by with the old version, I believe my old DOS version used saving goals and that is the only reason I went to Deluxe. I use no online functions at all. Check register with saving goals. Should look for another product, just use to Quicken, but maybe someday I might look around??
I don't see why going to 64 bit would improve anything, it's just used for addressing. But I getting pretty old and may be missing something.
There is a lot of myths out there about how such things work. And not all of them have anything to do with the actual programming. For non-programming cases, a company has to decide what mix of "fix old" and "create new" is the right one for them, and that directly affects what the programmers are allowed to do.
Since this thread is "64-bit" to improve performance (and really should have be "improve performance", without making the assumption that going to 64-bit is the solution).
In a program you can generally get a few percentage points of performance increase from things like use "optimize settings", or maybe even use 64-bit (it isn't the 64-bits that matter it is that you might not be switch certain low-level modes as much).
Switching the compiler to release mode instead of debug is trivial, switching to 64-bits isn't. Any gain isn't worth the effort.
When you are looking to "greatly improve" a program's performance, you look for the bottlenecks and work on them. For instance, changing an algorithm can vastly change the performance if you find something that is either taking a very long time and there is a better way to do it, or if that one thing has been done so many times even improving a bit will make everything faster.
These kinds of changes don't always require huge rewrites, but they do require a change in the way an organization is operating. Normally organizations think very little about going back and finding their bottlenecks and fixing them.
Another myth is "rewriting it will improve/fix it". As the Quicken Mac rewrite has proven, this is a multiple decade process for a program like Quicken. Such programs will always have mix of different APIs, different level of developers working on the code, and a mix of good and bad ideas on how to do things.
BTW when can switching to 64-bit really help? If Quicken was memory bound, then that would be a very good reason to create a 64-bit version. But Quicken isn't memory bound, it doesn't even use the max it can get with a 32-bit address space.
Version: R67.7 - Build: 27.1.67.7 Windows
Quicken, When is this product finally going to be upgraded to a 64 bit system?
I've been a Quicken for Windows user for 33 years and there had been very limited upgrades to the interface and specifically to the report writer over that time. The last update to the report writer, that I remember, was 20+ years ago. The interface and what can be done with the report writer is like a bad 90s nightmare. The ability to properly scale the size for printing forces the use of a 32 bit virtual print driver which no one in support knew until after multiple years of frustration I finally reached a 2nd level person. Another issue is when you have a large QDF file like I do you have to remove memorized transactions and keep them to a minimum for the product to function at a reasonable speed. 32 Bit systems can't handle the larger file sizes and the indexing was not robust enough to handle the number of memorized payees in my file so I had to painstakingly go through and removed 11,000 memorized payees which brought the speed back to a reasonable rate.
The largest Value of Quicken is the information you can extract from the data, but with a very limited report writer that extraction is more than difficult and frustrating. Why not attach a third-party report writer through API's into Quicken for Windows and Mac rather than developing it in-house which would take more time and dollars. I'm surer a reasonable royalty could be achieved with a Crystal Reports or some other provider who will continue to upgrade the report writer improving the experience of Quicken customers without major Quicken development resources being required.
So many of these problems that long time users currently deal with exist because the product has not been upgraded to a 64 bit system. I recognize it is a significant upgrade and therefore will take development a fair amount of time, probably years, to prepare it properly and it won't immediately drive additional sales, but it will definitely drive future sales to new customers who will generate ongoing support revenue for the future, which is the lifeblood of any software company. You no doubt have a large installed base of customers who have been with Quicken for many years like me, but they are getting fed up with the lack of improvement in Quicken Classic.
This is really disappointing to say but as a Quicken user of over 33 years I cannot recommend the current product to people looking for software to manage their finances because of the many limitations of the 32 bit system and I've begun my own research on finding an alternative product because of the lack of updating to a more modern platform. While just one user, there is no doubt many longtime users of Quicken who are experiencing the same frustrations but haven't taken the time to come on the Quicken community and send a message to Eric Dunn the Quicken CEO directly. Eric, in the unlikely event. you happen to see to see this post, I've read about your background and you are a developer and technology person at heart so please upgrade this product to a modern platform. It will create the ability to provide more robust upgrades and features in the future to attract new customers and so us longtime users can recommend Quicken to others, because the current 32 Bit platform and lack of upgrades to some of the main functionality limit the value of the product and perception that paying an annual usage fee is worthwhile.
Please invest the development dollars & time to upgrade this product to a 64 Bit platform.
@christ5560 You've posted about 64-bit several times in this community like it's some kind of magic wand. It's not. We keep telling you this, but apparently you don't care to believe us software developer-types that respond.
"So many of these problems that long time users currently deal with exist because the product has not been upgraded to a 64 bit system." Nope. I have no idea why you state this. I'm on these forums almost daily and I've seen no "long time problems" 64-bit would fix (just for funsies, can you list some? You're the only one I've seen complain about report scaling). It's mostly "big honking bank stopped downloading to my file." And throw in some "we want dark mode" which doesn't magically happen when you upgrade the code to 64-bit. Both are a lot of work and aren't directly related to each other.
"Please invest the development dollars & time to upgrade this product to a 64 Bit platform." For all the technical reasons mentioned in the other posts, this is non-trivial and would likely take man-years to do. For what benefit? So you can have your 11,000 memorized payees? 11,000 memorized payees? Who does that? Nobody. It doesn't even make sense having that many.
I'm done responding to these posts. 64-bit is not, and will likely never be a priority.
@christ5560 - You posted this last March as a Product Idea and it has 6 votes. It will need about 50 votes total before the Development Team will take it into consideration. After they make a decision on that they will then mark the Product Idea as Planned or Not Planned.
You need to give the process time to see if will get the necessary number of votes to be considered.
