Scrambling Eggs Is Easy

So the thing I was *really* waiting for from Macworld this year was the announcement of Quicken 2008 for the Mac.  Intuit has traditionally upgraded Quicken once a year, and I've generally skipped every other version.  Quicken 2007 was released in 2006 as a PowerPC product, and I assumed that Quicken 2008 would be Universal Binary, and would have better UI, more online integration, and generally would be taking its cues from the Windows version.  Since Quicken '08 for Mac wasn't released in 2007, I figured Macworld would be a good time to announce it.

As background, I've been using Quicken to track my personal finances since 1993.  I started on Quicken for Mac, switched to Windows in 1998, then back to the Mac in 2001.  One of my biggest frustrations was that a lot of features were implemented significantly better on the Windows version than on the Mac.  Many of the features I enjoyed on Quicken for Windows in 2000 -- special handling for 401(k)s, for example --  STILL were not available in Quicken 2006 (some were added in '07, but not enough for me to consider it worth upgrading).  Moreover, Quicken 2006 has a lot of irritating bugs.  I've never lost any important data, but it often crashes on me, not to mention disabling buttons that should be enabled, which makes it hard to do certain things (editing an account or a scheduled payment, for example).

Anyway, the upshot is that, according to Ars, at Macworld, Intuit is showing a new version of Quicken for the Mac, called Quicken Financial Life for the Macintosh.  QFLM is rewritten from the ground up, and takes a lot of design cues from the iLife suite and from Web 2.0 apps like Flickr, etc. etc.  It looks really nice.

BUT.  Two big issues:
1) Initial availability for the beta is scheduled for August.  For the BETA.  That's two solid years after the release of Quicken 2007 for the Macintosh.

2) The initial version of QFLM will be more limited than Quicken 2007 -- basically it'll handle basic checking/savings tracking, plus tracking investment holdings.  Like the recently-announced Quicken Online, it will not track mortgages, 401(k)s, etc.

This is a showstopper for me.  In the 14 years I've been using Quicken, I've gone from a college student with simple financial needs to an adult with a mortgage, stock options, retirement plans, and taxes to pay.  Quicken 2006 is doing an OK job of tracking my finances, but every time it crashes when I try to modify a scheduled payment, I cringe and look forward to a new version.

So, screw it.  I've been a loyal Intuit customer for a long, long time.  I'll probably continue to use TurboTax Online for my taxes, and I may even return to Quicken someday -- but for now, I'm going to try running Microsoft Money under Parallels.  If I have to use Windows for my personal finance software, I might as well try the software that I get an employee discount on.

It's not that I don't understand software development -- it's hard, and it takes a long time.  I do understand that Intuit has to make decisions about their priorities.  But if Mac users who actually have adult-complex finances aren't a high priority for them, then I also don't feel the need to continue giving them my business.  Sorry.

Apparently, the Time Machine feature page now indicates that you *can* back up to another computer over a wireless network, as long as it's running leopard.  This makes me feel good, since I'm using that to back up my laptop right now (I thought using an unsupported feature, but maybe not...)

Repair completed (07-Oct-2006)
Product return pending (07-Oct-2006)

Soon.

Repair requested 9/24/06.
"On Hold: Part on Order" 9/28/06.
10/4/06: Called in, and Samantha is going to see what she can do to expedite. Should see results in 1-2 business days.
Sigh.

The MacBook failed again this morning. Same problem as last time, although at least without the 2-minute wait to get the flashing folder icon (or boot into useless firewire target mode, or boot from the Apple Hardware Test CD where it can't actually see the hard drive, etc.)

Back to the Apple Store. Same 10:10 appointment I had last time. This time I'd damn well better get a new logic board.

I'm just laughing now, because the alternative is just too sad. Also, I have backups of what I was able to recover from the last one. Ah well.

The good news is, $350 later or so, I have new hard drives set to back up both my and Tobi's laptops. The bad news is that this appears to be necessary due to the failure not only of my Macbook Pro's hard drive, but subsequently not one but *two* drives to which I had copied semi-recent backups.

Fortunately, the second one decided to go *after* I had managed to copy most of the important stuff on it. And I haven't even tried to recover it yet, so it may not be as screwed. But it certainly does piss me off.

But the part that *really* pisses me off is what happened with the AppleCare repair. Now, on the surface, this couldn't have gone more smoothly. I dropped the computer off at the Apple store on Wednesday, 9/7, and received it fully repaired on Monday, 9/11. So far, no additional problems.

Except that when I dropped it off, knowing that I hadn't done a good backup recently (my own damn fault), I made a point of asking the Genius to request that, in the event that the hard drive required replacement, somebody would call me to check in. So when I saw on Friday that the repair had been completed, I didn't see anything about what had been fixed. I spent two hours(!) on hold with AppleCare waiting to speak to someone, who then told me that yeah, the hard drive was replaced, and the old one had probably been destroyed, and the repair people hadn't seen my note likely because "the store doesn't use the same system as the repair center."

To her credit, this customer service rep did agree to follow up on my case, and actually called me back twice -- once on Friday (about 30 minutes after our original conversation), and again on Monday to verify that yeah, the hard drive was gone and there wasn't anything they could do. So, at least I got some decent customer service.

When the second hard drive failed this morning, I just laughed -- how could it have been different? Ah well. From now on, nightly automatic backups for both my and Tobi's machine (mine is backing up right now, hers goes at 3am, plus I backed up all her photos and docs to DVD first).

Lesson learned, once again. Hopefully this time it sticks.

So Steve Jobs announced the Intel-based Mac Mini yesterday.

My coworker was impressed and decided to order one. He wasn't in a hurry and ordered it with regular ground shipping.

It is sitting on his desk RIGHT NOW.

Apple must be learning about this whole "announce when you're ready to ship" thing...

So the long-awaited iTunes 4.9 with podcasting support was released today, and I've got it on my Mac, and it looks great, but...

THE DIRECT IPOD SUPPORT REQUIRES A 4G (click wheel) IPOD!!!

As far as I can tell, there's no way to get the little "Podcasts" menu on my lowly 3G 15GB iPod, and so no official Apple-supported way to manage podcasts effectively on my iPod. Frack.

So, I guess I'll stick with the mediocre-UI, flaky, but generally effective iPodderX until such time as I can afford a new iPod. Which probably won't be till after the wedding. Ah well.