Blocked from today's goal

[yesthattom]

So much for paying bills today. I spent 3 hours trying to covert from Quicken for Windows to Quicken for Macintosh. I've been using Quicken for 5-7 years with no complaints. I could never understand other people that would complain about it until today. I just can't figure out what's wrong. All I want to do is to activate my Fleet account so that I can download my transaction lists. It just goes in circles.

I swear I'm going to buy VirtualPC just so that I can run Quicken for Windows. This SUCKS.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

before you do that....

You might consider downloading the stuff to make OSX more Unix-like, including fink, an X server, and the gnome libraries, then installing gnucash. Use a windows PC to download the Fleet stuff and then gnucash will import your QfW .QIF files. done.

it's really interesting...

[happypete.livejournal.com]

There are a few categories of software where the PC has always won over the Mac. The most common ones seem to do with finances business accounting such as QuickBooks, which actually stopped even DOING a Mac version a couple of years back, Quicken/Money, etc.

I can't think of any architectural reason--either hardware or software--that makes one platform more successful with this class of software...so the reason must somehow be sociological--perhaps market driven...but don't Mac users need and want a program to manage their personal finances that works reliably and well?

This one SEEMS like a no-brainer...

Re: it's really interesting...

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

The Mac's traditional market has been academia (they've sold computers at greatly reduced cost to schools for over 20 years now) and users who do lots of graphic design work. Therefore, Macs get the good graphics programs (like Photoshop--PC Photoshop sucked for a long time compared to the Mac version), and they get decent versions of word processing and desktop publishing software. (Which are virtually indistinguishable at this point anyway, but remember Aldus PageMaker back around ten years ago?)

The release of OSX appears to be an attempt to expand into yet another niche market, namely geeks who are dissatisfied with Windows and who would otherwise run a free Unix-like OS such as Linux or FreeBSD.

The business desktop market has gone after PCs for soemthing like 15 years now based mostly on price point. Therefore, PCs get the good "business" software like small business accounting, personal financial management, etc.

Much of the difference has to do with the software manufacturer in question and what they believe the market for a given software package is going to be on each platform.

Re: it's really interesting...

[happypete.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Apple can survive "one niche at a time?" Because I have an MCSE, many people "assume" that I'm an MS drone...but I was an avid and active Washington Apple Pi member as a (scares me to say it) pre-teen, and--with a "vacation" as a PC-based FidoNet sysop for most of my teen years--then a UNIX and Mac user at school for most of my undergraduate career...it was a big change for us when the PC's in the undergrad computer lab in the AE building switched over from Mac to PC...but the tools like Matlab, etc., weren't running well or supported well on the Mac any more.

Sigh.