I saw a post mentioning the new release of the Personal Finance software, Moneydance. Quite honestly I'd never heard of Moneydance before, but interestingly it is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I had looked briefly at iBank before, and while visually it looks very nice, it doesn't have the ability to directly download your bank and other information straight from the internet, you first have to logon to your account and download a file, then import that into iBank - I have over 15 various accounts and have zero interest in taking on this task manually.

I've been using Quicken for over 15 years now, and while I am overall pretty happy with the product, I have a love / hate relationship with Quicken. I love it because it handles all that I need it to do and it greatly automates and simplifies the tracking of my household personal financial management. I hate it because I think it should be more elegant and (pun intended) more intuitive. I also hate that since switching back to the Mac in February 2006 I've had to keep running Quicken for Windows because the Mac version of Quicken is a complete joke.

The marketing that you will find on Intuit's website for Quicken don't give you any indication at how inferior Quicken for Mac is compared to it's Windows counterpart. I imported my Windows data into the Mac version of Quicken and was seriously disappointed as I tried it out. I would estimate that the Mac version is more comparable to Quicken for Windows 1996, not 2006. To make sure I wasn't missing something, I checked user reviews at both Amazon and MacUpdate, and unfortunately confirmed my discovery that Quicken for Mac is pretty lame.

Side note: Oddly enough, while the Windows and Mac versions of Quicken bear no resemblance in features or interface, TurboTax on both platforms is virtually identical. Kudos to the TurboTax team for giving the Mac a decent product. I'm not sure, but maybe TurboTax is done in Java and easier to port across platforms?

When I saw the notice about Moneydance and read that it could import from banks etc. I decided to try it out but after a brief foray realized that it's not full featured enough for me to give it serious consideration. Great job in getting it to import data from the net, but for my relatively modest financial management needs Moneydance isn't the ticket for me.

I would love to see somebody come up with a serious program. I'm beginning to think that Apple may have to play hardball to make this happen. Either somehow get Intuit to bring Quicken for Mac up to speed, or develop their own product. Apple obviously has some great software engineering talents and a knack for fantastic user interfaces. Apple would have the clout to hook into the financial institutions for downloading data. Personally, I'd rather pay Apple $75 for a decent product than Intuit but either way I just want something that I can run on my Mac that will give me the same experience, or better, than Quicken for Windows currently provides.

Which product to you use?

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You can discuss this topic here.
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