Trying to use a Mac computer exclusively in April, I found the lack of good financial software for the Mac a serious problem. Quicken 2007 for Mac is the “current” version, and I found it won’t work with any of 12 financial institutions I need it for. Quicken Financial Life for Mac is in beta, but I found it failed to connect to more than half of the same. (I was in the beta program but uninstalled the product and forgot to save the original installer to try it again later.) QFL was to be released this summer, but they now say it will be released in the fall.

I’ve tried two online services - Quicken Online and Mint. Both Quicken Online and Mint offer iPhone apps to check into their services. In April, these services were rough going - failing to connect to many financial institutions. Today, I’m still using both, but each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Mint is good at connecting because of the way you setup each account. With financial institutions requiring security questions and answers when you login, Mint has you save the answers in your account there so the service can get past those Q&As for you. Quicken Online’s approach is to have you manually step through those Q&As. Both services seem to get stuck when they encounter websites with new, unexpected steps to get by (announcements, updates, etc.).

Both services have greatly improved their ability to connect, but still aren’t 100%. For example, both fail to connect to PNC Bank’s Virtual Wallet service. This could be PNC Bank’s fault - I find their whole website layout very strange. The concept of a register isn’t prominent on the site - instead, they display amounts in different colored boxes on a calendar. But it’s unclear what all the different colors mean, or how much is in the account. To transfer money between accounts, they display a slider to move whole dollar amounts (cents not allowed here). PNC plans to release a redesigned site this summer - perhaps fixing some of these things.

Mint does not allow you to post pending transactions or registers for offline accounts (accounts payable, accounts receivable, or accounts which they fail to connect to). Quicken Online does allow you to post transactions which haven’t yet cleared, but does not allow registers of offline accounts.

Don’t people make lists of bills due in order of due date, to know how much they add up to, for planning purposes? I’d like the option of an accounts payable register for this. I’d like to enter each bill, it’s minimum due, balance, due date, etc. Then on bill paying day, I can look over the list, and decide how much to pay on each account, by assigning an account to pay it with, and observing its effect on my account balances. I was able to do this with Microsoft Money, but neither Quicken Online nor Mint currently allow this. I don’t wish to post bills directly into actual accounts because it’s important to know what those account balances really are.

Quicken Online has one feature that can be dangerous and costly if you’re not careful. QO analyzes your patterns of deposits and withdrawls, and creates predictive transactions. After working with the system for a few weeks, I looked to check my balance and believed it. Unfortunately, QO had included deposits I never made - QO just predicted that I would make them. There is no way to tell the difference between posts you have made and predictive transactions QO has made, since they appear in the same place on the register - above the line between cleared and uncleared transactions. I want transactions I post clearly distinguished from those which QO predicts.

You are able to manually delete each one of these predicted transactions, and can tell QO not to repeat the same prediction (for that exact payee name), but QO continues to post predictive transactions for each payee name until individually told to stop for every last one of them. There should be a way to tell QO to STOP inserting predictive transactions into the register, so that I can trust what I see, knowing that I put it there. Otherwise, I can only trust cleared transactions, and my pile of uncleared receipts.

Parallels for Mac is one of several options for running Windows software on the Mac, and seems to be the best in terms of speed and running both OS platforms concurrently. The current version allows you to install a fresh copy of Windows OR transfer everything from an existing drive (woo hoo!).

I’ve purchased a copy to try it out, but I’m wondering if I’ll be able to fit everything from my Vista system onto the Mac drive. I’m thinking it’ll be ok because I can delete the windows programs I’ll no longer need. Parallels 4.0 also allows you to customize Windows to make it leaner, eliminating unnecessary processes. It even comes with a special version of Kaspersky to keep your Windows environment save with a 12-month subscription included.

The Macintosh Mini, with OS X, starting at $599

Getting an iPhone in January, I’ve begun to learn more about Apple products and how they work. With the price of the Mac Mini starting at $599, I decided to finally explore the world of Macintosh and use one full-time for 30 days. The machine I bought came with OS X 10.5 (Leopard) with iLife ‘09 and iPhoto ‘09 pre-installed.

I made a list of all the applications I use on my Vista machine, and started looking at how I could perform all of the same tasks on the Mac. I chuckled when I noticed how many Windows security products I wouldn’t need to bring along.

Most of my time is spent online, and Firefox is available for OS X, and all the same add-ons are available. Itunes comes on a Mac, and syncs well with the iphone. I alternate between Tweekdeck and AlertThingy as Twitter clients, both of which use AdobeAir, also available for OS X. PDF creation is built into OS X. MP3 files can be created with Audacity for Mac. All of these are free products.

I have used Outlook Express to archive email messages on Windows for many years. OS X’s Mail program opens .eml files just fine, preserving header info and attachments. Mail can save messages in .eml format (called ‘raw source’), html or txt formats.

My Magicjack worked fine on the Mac Mini; just plugged it in, and it loaded the mac software.

My Maxtor One-Touch Plus came with software for Windows or Mac, so when I plugged it into the mac, it provided pdf instructions for converting the drive for mac use, and associated itself with OS X’s Time Machine, an automated backup system that works well. Hard drives written for windows can’t be used on the Mac as-is. Files can be read from them and copied to the Mac, but for the ability to read and write, it is necessary to reformat them for the Mac.

I bought Microsoft Office for Mac 2009, but could have opted to use iWork ‘09, or Open Office (free).

I bought Feed For All Mac for easy RSS feed generation.

I bought Nortons AntiVirus for Mac to scan everything coming in, just to be sure.

FINANCIAL SOFTWARE:

The big downfall for Mac users is the lack of good choices in financial software. I’m used to using Microsoft Money, importing account transactions from many banks and financial companies. Microsoft does not make a version of the product for Mac, and I need software that works with all my banks!

I hoped to find Quicken to be compatible with MS Money, but it falls short. The latest version is Quicken 2007 for Mac (released in 2006), but it has received poor online reviews. A growing number of banks no longer offer to export data for Quicken, some preferring you use a paid online service instead.

I tested Quicken Online, a new free service. It falls short of my needs, and has some serious design flaws (like the insertion of predicted transactions, mixed right in with ‘accounts payable’ that I posted, making it difficult to tell what’s what). Quicken Online claims to be able to match new transactions to one’s you’ve entered, recognizing “friendly names” you’ve used (like “McDonalds” instead of “McDonalds Store #2099”); unfortunately I never found this feature to work. Quicken Online restricts the creation of accounts just to those they can sync with… no “accounts payable” or accounts to which their sync process fails. This service could develop into something good - they were able to handle some checking, savings, credit cards, lines of credit, loans and retirement accounts. But I would want to be able to post future bills, and to turn off their “predicted transactions”.

I also tried Quicken Financial Life for Mac which is in beta. This desktop client allows the creation of any account ledger, including an accounts payable. Each account can optionally be setup to sync with financial institutions. Unfortunately, the beta program had even more problems syncing with financial institutions. It doesn’t offer an option to print an account register either, something I use when paying bills. It also won’t let me reassign transactions, something I do to pay bills, moving each bill from accounts payable to the account I intend to pay with.

For business accounting, it is essential that I use Quickbooks, to be compatible with existing records, and to share files with accountants. I tried Quickbooks Online but during signup, discovered the service requires Windows. This is now available for the Mac, but does not include payroll.

Then I tried Quickbooks 2009 for Mac, which claimed to be able to do everything that Quickbooks for Windows does. After installing the program it is necessary to run a conversion utility to change the Windows backup file (.QBB) to Mac format (.MAC.QBB).

I’ve been using Quickbooks for Windows 2007 with Intuit’s Basic Payroll ($99/yr) to provide a few employees direct deposit. What I found after installing QB2009 for Mac is that Intuit’s Basic Payroll is NOT supported. Under the employee section, they list two third-party services you can choose (PayCycle and Aatrix), for more than double the price. Attempting to click through to Aatrix dumped me onto a page of raw code (shown to the right). If they can’t get their webpage link to work right, I’m not very confident about their service’s ability to integrate with Quickbook for Mac.

DIFFERENCES:

I’ve been using iTunes for an ipod for years, and now use it for the iPhone. On Windows, I’ve been having trouble syncing lately, and my apps crash daily. Switching to the Mac, the app crashes have stopped, and syncing just works, pulling my contacts from either Yahoo Mail or Gmail without any trouble. OS X Contacts (addressbook) also syncs, and includes any associated photos of contacts that I setup on the iphone.

The Mac Mini uses smaller versions for VGA and DVI plugs which require adapters. The Mini comes with a DVI to DVI mini adapter, but it was a different type than my PC’s DVI plugs which have four extra pins around the horizontal slot.

I was using a Firewire cable for the Maxtor drive, but there is no Firewire port on the Mini, so I located the USB cable that came with the drive - USB mini to USB.

I found it frustrating to be without an easy way to do screen grabs - something I do a lot in web development. I found a Firefox add-on for browser screen grabs, but I still want to be able to copy the screen in other situations. Thank you for those who have told me to use shift-cmd-3 or shift-cmd-4 to copy the screen.

CONCLUSION:

I like much about the Mac experience - particularly the low incidence of screen freezes, video tearing and blue crash screens (BSODs). I also like being a smaller target for viruses, worms and such. But along with great hardware, I need a great selection of software to accomplish precise tasks. The Mac falls short in financial software, something I can’t do without. For now, I’ve moved back to the Vista PC - along with my Maxtor One-Touch reformatted for Windows. I’ll leave my ipod and Magicjack connected to the Mac, and use it for the things it does well. And I had to laugh when my Windows machine crashed with the Blue Screen of Death - I guess that’s just Vista’s way of welcoming me back.