Scan through the press materials trumpet Intuit ’s new release of Quicken Mac 2007 , and you ’ll see lots of verbiage devoted to batch of feature such as 401(k ) management , elaborated paycheck entrance , and a widget for entering information on the tent-fly . But there ’s one intelligence you wo n’t see : Universal .
It ’s not an accidental omission . The major renovation to the personal finance management lotion released Tuesday arrives without adding native support for Intel - based Macs . It ’s not a fatal flaw — Quicken runs under Apple ’s Rosetta emulation technology , albeit not as fast as it might if Intuit released an Intel - native version . ( Though to be comely , an Intuit representative says that the performance gains from experience a aboriginal variation of Quicken to run on an Intel - base Mac are trifling . ) Still , the absence seizure of aboriginal Intel support does n’t speak to a very deep reason of the Mac merchandising on Intuit ’s part .
After all , this is the second major upgrade to Quicken since Apple bring out its Intel changeover plans at the 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference . There was a valid cause for Quicken 2006 not running natively on Intel - based Macs — it ship less than two months after Steve Jobs harbinger the switch to Intel - furnish processors and long before any Core duet - powered hardware arrived on the scene . But with an entire year between the Intel transition announcement and the departure of Quicken Mac 2007 , it would seem like Intuit had enough forward motion word of advice to include aboriginal Intel livelihood in this variant .
Again , I ’ll promptly concede that , in the greater scheme of things , having a program like Quicken that does n’t really assess a Mac ’s processor is n’t that vainglorious of a deal — until you reckon the context . Intuit has a reasonably colourful history with Mac users — the company pretermit backing for a Mac version of QuickBooks back for five twelvemonth back in the late ’ 90s . Even now , therevived Mac versionisn’t on par with its Windows counterpart . pass that chronicle , it ’s only human nature for Mac user to see Intuit not produce a worldwide interpretation of Quicken and question what that have in mind about the society ’s interest group in this platform .
Intuit toldMacworldthat it put its focus on “ feature that customers told us were the most important”—the aforesaid 401(k ) and detail paycheck additions , namely . That may well be , but I have a hard prison term believing that aboriginal support would n’t be near the top of the wish lists for most Intel - based Mac owner . And I have areallyhard time believing it ’s not at the top of Apple ’s wish inclination , give the caller ’s own stepped - up sweat to update its apps to run natively on both PowerPC and Intel machine .
Boy , if there only there was someone at Intuit with some special insight into Apple ’s strategic desires — someone like … and I ’m just loose - associating here … Intuit Chairman Bill Campbellwho also has a seat onApple ’s Board of Directors . Someone almost exactly like that .
Huh . Well , maybe he ’s been out of the way engender coffee every time the Intel transition ’s come up at board meetings during the past year .
Ah , but we kid because we do not interpret . And Intuit could do its part to help us understand by answering some of the lurk questions that are out there . Will Quicken Mac 2007 get an update at some point so that it runs natively on an Intel Mac ? Or will Intel Mac user have to wait until the next major service a yr from now ? And does this mean that QuickBooks will face a similar fate ?
Intuit should mean about providing some clear answers to those questions — not for my benefit and not for its own sake , but for the benefit of the Quicken user who have buy MacBooks and iMac Core Duos and who are now being asked to pay anywhere from $ 50 to $ 70 , depending on rebate , for a program that does n’t play natively on their hardware .
