Intuit has announced that its popular finance application, Quicken, will be updated with Lion support in “early spring” of next year. The 2007 version of Quicken for Mac will be updated with Lion compatibility and Intuit promises that it will focus more on Mac development in the future.
Quicken for Mac doesn’t work on Lion because Apple discontinued support for Rosetta apps that are based on PowerPC architecture. The updated version of Quicken for Mac 2007 will finally run natively on Intel hardware.
MacRumors has the email that Intuit sent out to its Quicken customers today:
As you may know, Quicken for Mac 2007 does not currently work on Apple’s latest operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). I understand the frustration this may have caused you and have put a team in place to address this issue. I am happy to announce that we will have a solution that makes Quicken 2007 for Mac “Lion-compatible” by early spring. There are still details to be worked out, so I ask your continued patience as we work through these.
There’s also a new FAQ on Lion compatibility for Quicken that customers can check out. Intuit notes that customers using the 2005, 2006 or 2007 versions of Quicken for Mac will simply be able to open their existing data files in the updated Lion version of Quicken next year. It looks like the failed Quicken Essentials for Mac app is being ignored altogether.
It’s taken forever for Intuit to update its Mac app, and the company isn’t even releasing a totally new version for Lion. Now would be the perfect opportunity for a completely redesigned Quicken app to show up in the Mac App Store, but Intuit is instead taking the easy and lazy way out.
While Quicken was great back in the day, there are now many more options out there for managing your personal finances. Jumsoft’s Money app is a perfect candidate, and Mint has also become popular (oddly enough, Intuit owns Mint, too).
Have you already given up on Quicken, or are you still holding out hope?
