I have been on the mac platform using OS X daily for about 9 years. When I was first introduced to it professionally, OS 8 had just been released and I was a Windows/Novell administrator at Carnegie Hall. Switching from Windows XP to OS X was a no-brainer, it just worked better and looked a ton better. Coupled with the fact that I am Certified Unix administrator and I can run real Windows, it was a smarter choice. However, the sad truth that differentiates a Windows and Macintosh is that Windows does business better and mac does creative better; a dubious distinction, but one none the less.
More or less with the help of Parallels I was able to feign all of the windows capabilities I ever needed, but then when I started my own business I needed hands-on with my finances. I chose quickbooks on the mac, knowing that it was glorified crippleware, but for the simplicity of a one man operation, I thought it would not matter.
Quickbooks on the mac is the fisher-price equivalent of accounting software, and that is after running the update. The stand-out features are .Mac sync’ing and the ability to transport it to the windows version (but it is a one way process, and I was always afraid to test it) and a nice mac aqua style interface. The best part was watching the accountants eyes glaze over as he tried to find simple things like tax reports. I felt like I might have been better served by paying attention in accounting class and doing my bookkeeping in a ledger book. It would have been more portable that way…
Well, anyway, 6 months after upgrading from Leopard (10.5) to Snow Leopard (10.6) and using my legitimately purchased copy of Quickbooks 2007 4-5 times a week, the software decided that it could no longer operate without phoning home and registering my copy with the Quickbooks Master Licensing server. As the quickbooks registration software failed, it told me to call up Intuit support. Having called intuit on behalf of my clients many times, I knew that it would be unlikely that a phone call to Intuit would result in a positive outcome.
My call to Intuit connected me to a Representative who could have been no closer than 4500 miles from my current location in the western hemisphere. And after explaining the situation, I was informed that there is no fix for this problem and I would have to upgrade to the latest version of quickbooks for the mac for about $200 in order to view my financial records that were trapped within my version of quickbooks. I explained to the representative that I thought that was typical business practice for those in the business of extortion, not financial accounting software for small businesses, he did not understand. After requesting to speak to a supervisor, and another 20 minutes of hold time, I was told that the other option I had was to downgrade my system back to Leopard (10.5), not a trivial process by any means. It turns out that the registration program works in old Leopard…
Out of not quite desperation, but because I was annoyed, I trolled the internet to find what others have done to solve this problem, because I thought that I was not the only one. I found a few people that had a much bigger problems with Quickbooks 2007 on Snow Leopard, but none seemed as trivial as the registration software not working.
Going back to the primordial interface the connects my seat to the dull black key of my MBP, I checked to see what exactly worked or did not work after quickbook failed to register and did not let me open my company file. It seemed that they had ghosted every useful menu item, and as much as that sucked the actual quickbooks program was still running.
I thought to myself what would a stubborn computer user do in this situation? There had to be a simple answer and I was trying to solve the hard problem. After spending about 5 minutes sifting throughout the numerous backups that quickbooks had no Idea how to keep track of I found my most current active quickbooks file. I double clicked on it, my company file opened. I was saved. IT JUST OPENED, what the F!!!!
If I were a normal user I would have probably never read the error message or called Intuit and wasted over an hour on the phone with incompetent tech support. I would have just tried to double click on the company file, and everything would have just worked.
So in the end the annoyance of dealing with the registration of software within quickbooks, software that I legitimately purchase exposed a flaw with quickbooks that is just the tip of the ice berg in how Intuit tries to throttle cash out of America’s small businesses. If you feel like switching to better accounting software on the Mac platform, I would recommend
Accounting Edge or MYOB.