Analysis: How Serious Is Intuit About Quicken: Mac?


Following up on our story yesterday on Apple's shareholder meeting, IGM reader John Osward commented,

"It is with some amusement that I read the article on Intuit dropping mac support. Since I am the stockholder that took issue with William campbell sitting on the Board at Apple...I objected to the seating of Mr. Campbell on the board due to the complete lack of advancement of Quickbooks Pro for Mac over several years. It had NOTHING to do with the lack of feature parity of Quicken for Mac, though that is an issue also...To my knowledge, Intuit is not dropping Mac support, they simply have failed to advance our platform at a rate anywhere near our Windows compatriots, thereby causing me concern as a stockholder."

Later yesterday, we updated to report on Intuit's beta program for Quicken 2003. Intuit is apparently developing this version for both OS X and 9. But as Mr. Oswald notes, Mac versions lag behind Windows editions considerably in feature parity.

While not directly related to Intuit, only a relatively small number of US banks offer Mac Quicken support, with the Bank of America announcing in January this year it would cease support of Quicken on the Mac platform. But by not supporting recurring payments in Mac Quicken, Intuit hastened its demise as a supported platform in the banking sector.While Intuit suggested workarounds, it failed to note the bottom line: that their Windows customers didn't have to worry about workarounds.

Indirectly, it also suggests poor marketing of Quicken as a banking solution to Intuits business and consumer customers, given the several million iMacs in service all bundled with Quicken. When consumers see it "doesn't work" on Mac, they switch to Windows for their banking. Ultimately, they may switch to Windows altogether.

Intuit has also abandoned certain Mac markets entirely. Intuit has no Mac version or distributor for Quicken: Mac in Australia, although it does a healthy business on the Windows side of the ledger. As a result, MYOB completely dominates the Mac business/SOHO market, particularly following the introduction of GST (goods and services tax) nation wide in 2000, which created enormous demand for a small business financial application solution. Intuit were asked whether they planned to reintroduce a Mac version and said 'no', despite the clear popularity of the Mac version of MYOB. The last Mac version of Quicken for the Australian market was Quicken 4.0, around 10 years ago.

In Intuit's defense, the company did add OS X support to Quicken 2002, which Apple itself touts on a web page. However, users have pointed out that one cannot get brokerage information from certain sites via Mac Quicken 2002. Nor can you even import the data to the Mac, having downloaded it via the Windows version.

The bottom line is that Quicken and QuickBooks Mac do not provide the same functionality as their Windows counterparts. While MS Office apps - Visual Basic and Access aside - are largely feature compatible, Quicken is not. Users have to resort to VPC or another emulator, which itself defeats the purpose of having Quicken on the Mac in the first place.

The other bottom line is, as Mr. Oswald points out, the fact that Mr. Campbell takes home a nice slice of cake from his vaunted position on the Apple Board. And eats it too.