Quicken on Windows 11 built with Arm64EC for Arm devices
Is there any plan to rewrite Quicken as a 64-bit process and then use the Arm64EC application binary interface - to get native performance on Windows 11 Arm devices? As I understand it, new Windows Arm devices will run 64-bit applications in emulation mode. However, 32-bit applications (like Quicken Classic) will not be supported.
(I'm always using the latest Quicken Windows Premier subscription version.)
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Please see revisions in the initial post.
Quicken Windows Subscription: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 21H2.
(I'm always using the latest Quicken Windows Premier subscription version.)0 -
Quicken Classic works perfectly well running on my MacBook Pro M1 Max using Parallels and Windows 11 install. Current Macs use the ARM instruction set. It's a little slower than it would be native, but I haven't seen any issues with it otherwise, and it's not really that much slower than on my Windows laptop with an Ultra 7 CPU.
I suspect that the newer ARM CPUs coming out this year for Windows, such as the Elite X will run things a lot better than the first round of ARM CPUs that came out a few years ago. They have dedicated hardware for x86 translation (like the Mac does) and far faster and newer cores.
I would not expect Quicken to do this anytime soon, as they'd need to move the entire codebase to far more modern standards and libraries. Microsoft isn't providing tools and libraries from the 1990's for ARM development, it's only the modern libraries.
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If (when?) Quicken rewrites for 64 bit (and presumably updates to modern development standard) then would it be fairly easy to also compile for ARM?
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Windows developer here who contracts with a company maintaining a very old 32-bit codebase much like Quicken.
Well, yes, the recompile for ARM would be fairly easy, but the first part (about rewriting Quicken for 64-bit) would take years to get there. As has been stated in many other threads, converting a very old 32-bit code base to 64-bit is non-trivial for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that old libraries may not have 64-bit versions which requires finding substitutes that may require rewriting lots of code to use it. Major changes like that guarantee there are new bugs that get introduced when replacing code that, while old, has been reliable and stable for many years.
You only need to look at the Quicken Mac development saga to understand why rewrites take years. And it still hasn't reached feature parity with Windows Quicken.
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That makes sense. I wasn't too optimistic about getting a 64 bit version any time soon. I would assume (hope) that if they do need to create new features, or significantly revise existing features, that they would be updating this legacy stuff, but that may be only a drop in the bucket of the entire problem.
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@jtemplin very well said.
Here is what my crystal ball says. Quicken Windows will never be a 64-bit program. As you said it would take almost total rewrite and that is never going to happen. Intuit lost a lot of money in the Quicken Mac rewrite because no one would pay for the "essentials version", but it was only possible because the big money maker was Quicken Windows, and it wasn't rewritten. Quicken Inc can't afford the same mistake.
And I think it is pretty obvious their crystal ball says the same thing, as in keep Quicken Windows going along as far as possible but put "future effort" into the web/mobile App based Quicken Simplifi.
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