Intuit’s Quicken is the only software product I’ve used in the past ten years that gets consistently worse with each subsequent version. I started out with Quicken in 95 or 97, when it was a pretty stable, usable app, although it did have its quirks. Each version since then has been more complicated, more unstable, and slower than the version before. At the current pace, I’ll be back to balancing registers by hand in about 2006, I estimate.
But things have really hit their low point with my recent switch to the Mac. Everything about the switch went pretty smoothly, with the exception of moving my Quicken data. For some obscure reason I never quite understood, I couldn’t access my online balance and transaction info via Quicken for several months. I spent literally hours on the phone with my bank’s long-suffering and patient (but often totally clueless) customer service personnel, until they finally straightened everything out. Sort of: I can download transactions into Quicken now, but a whole bunch of the past few months’ transactions got duplicated in the process, and I’m still not sure we’ve eliminated every duplicate. The result: my Quicken balances can’t be trusted.
And, it turns out, Quicken for the Mac is a completely retarded program–and I mean that in the literal sense of “held back,” “slow to develop,” “retrograde,” and “dumb.” You can’t sort by the cleared/uncleared status of transactions–which makes it next to impossible to do a quick, back-of-the-envelope reality check of your balance vs. the bank’s balance. You can’t manually clear or unclear transactions by clickig in the “clr” field. It’s slow. There’s no one-line-per-transaction view. The only columns you can sort by are “date” and “number.” Who programmed this thing? A class of sixth graders could do better.
Sadly, this hell that I’m locked into is inescapable. There are simply no alternatives on the Mac. Sure, there are a few alternative money managers, but it’s not clear they’ll interface cleanly with my bank’s online system–a feature I consider completely essential. Also essential: being able to sort and search transactions, being able to track where money is going by category, and being able to track loan payments and amortization schedules. Oh, yeah–and being able to import the past few years’ of my Quicken financial data, cleanly and accurately. That’s about it. This is not rocket science, folks. How come no one is going after this market? Intuit’s only real challenger is Microsoft Money, which is PC-only, and that program, too, is excessively big and complicated. Someone needs to kill Quicken — and soon. Please?
Just installed Quiken 2003 in a WinXP machine.
It stinks!!!
I have used Quicken for about a dozen years and yes, it gets worse with each new release. I am sure Intuit’s financial position depends on users updating every year. so marketing dreams up changes to try and pedal off new versions. I only need Quicken for banking, and monitoring the current value of my portfolio. All the other gimmicks are useless to me. I have always had the check register as my opening screen. Now the opening screen is a blur of many choices from the bowels of the program. For years I have asked that electronic checks allow for the date issued instead of the date it will probably be received. I was promised this was being worked on. It never happened. If this program is now directed to helping financial morons, then there should be a simple version for those of us that do quite well, and just need to monitor banking and stock portfolios. I am a computer instructor, and warn my students as to the ills of current Quicken programs. I have discussed this with Richard Katz of Intuit.
I think I will reinstall Quicken 2002 and throw 2003 away.
By the way Intuit shot themselves in the foot with Turbo Tax. They required activating the program for 1 computer only, which prevented me from working taxes on my laptop and then finalizing on my desktop. Everyone I know jumped on the $10 Tax Act program and no longer use Turbo Tax because of this. Even though Intuit rescinded later it was too late. I will now use Tax Act until they get bloated and greedy
Its not just their software. They are out there promoting themselves as a great mortgage lender. What a crock! Avoid them at all costs.
You might enjoy reading this article on MS Money by a Microsoft developer.
link