I was using Quicken for Windows since 6 years ago, then I moved into Mac World, and I started using Quicken Mac 2007, but I was tired of having a single window for each account/report/catalog. Then I tried iBank, but it was very impractical entering transactions using the keyboard. You see, Quicken for Mac 2007 (as well as Quicken for Mac 2005 and 2006) were built for the ancient PowerPC processor and were only able to run on modern Intel-based Macs by the grace of an Apple.

I've used quicken for about 20 years and have been frustrated at having to run the windows version in a virtual machine. I tried many of the mac alternatives, but none even came close to the slickness of quicken. Finally, I started rethinking the whole thing and realized that quicken didn't even serve a purpose anymore, at least not for me.

When we all wrote checks for everything and it often took a week or more for checks to clear, particularly bills by mail, and there was no real time online data available from the bank, it made sense. However, there's a reason this software category is being neglected.

The world has changed. Most of us don't write checks anymore. We pay our bills electronically. Account activity is reflected within hours on the banks site as pending or processing. The bank has functionality similar to quicken. I can run reports, categorize transactions, set rules, aggregate accounts by linking to external accounts. I was spending hours with quicken, hand entering receipts, downloading data and matching and reconciling.

Reconciling is itself an outmoded concept. What am I reconciling to? I'm reconciling quicken to the bank, not the other way around. That process has never caught a bank error, only a quicken error, usually caused by me. So, I was a slave to the software, the process and my own outdated thinking. A word of caution on using third party aggregators. You may be violating your banks online service agreement by providing your authentication information and putting yourself at risk of the bank telling you 'too bad, so sad' if you suffer a breach, regardless of the source of that breach.

Do you really want to get into a fight with your bank or the third party aggregator over who is responsible for making you whole? Just use the financial institution's online capabilities. • Answered by Hal S from Plano • Jun 13, 2013 •. Intuit's new program, Quicken Essentials, lacks many of the features of Quicken and may not meet your needs.

The most recent Mac version of Quicken is Quicken 2007, and it is incompatible and will not work on the latest Mac operating system, Lion. Intuit has recently announced that they will provide a version of Quicken 2007 that will run on Lion, expected in spring 2012. That's encouraging, but you might want to wait and see, since Intuit hasn't been to good at keeping their promises. There are several alternative banking programs available that are newer and better supported than Quicken that you could check out, but they all have their own shortcomings.

Java keeps asking for update mac download. DO NOT UPDATE. My friend and I both had this problem and we figured out that it was a fake Java update.

• Answered by William H from Bourne • Dec 27, 2011 •. PayPal is NOT compatible with iBank.

No categories are downloaded, which makes it useless for my purposes. I found this out after many, many hours of trying and phoning and echatting. It is also not fully compatible with FreshBooks. It is ONLY compatible with QuickBooks and Quicken on a PC.