Not all problems go unsolved...

Most of you won't be interested, but I got an e-mail that made me feel better about the world:

Dear Quicken Mac Customer:

As a fellow Mac fan and customer, I wanted to personally introduce myself, and share some highlights of our Apple-related efforts with you.

I recently became General Manager of the Personal Finance Group at Intuit, responsible for Quicken and Mint.com. Intuit's 25 years of leadership in personal financial management software makes me excited to lead this team and I am committed to creating products to help you reach your financial goals.

I recognize, however, that we have not always delivered on this promise to Quicken Mac customers.

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. In the meantime, you can find more information on our Mac FAQ page...

...Sincerely,

Aaron Forth

General Manager, Intuit Personal Finance Group

It's not that I love Quicken, it's more that the other ones are worse. As I discovered when I upgraded to Mac OS 10.7, and couldn't use Q. Mostly I had Q all down-pat for those particular reports and such I needed, and I've hated starting over.

And this development is interesting from a business management perspective. Intuit stopped Mac development just at the moment (2007) when anybody with sense should have seen that the Apple platforms were heading in exciting directions. The first iPhone was unveiled on January 9, 2007. The Apple Stores were by then a clear success, iTunes and the iPod were king in music, Mac OS-X was clearly a winner.... So of course that's the right moment moment to put all your chips on Microsoft. I bet Intuit was full of those faux-manly tech types who dismiss Apple customers as "fanboi" who have "drunk the Steve Jobs Kool-aid."