Mac users holding their breath waiting for the new version of Quicken Financial Life to ship will likely have blue lips before the application hits store shelves because Intuit has delayed the release until early 2010.
According to Intuit spokesman Scott Gulbransen, the company decided to essentially start over yet again after soliciting user feedback. "After speaking to customers at Macworld 2009, and opening our public beta of Quicken Financial Life for Mac to thousands of you, we learned the product was not doing what we -- nor customers -- wanted it to do," he said.
This isn't the first delay for the Quicken update. Intuit originally promised an new version would ship in 2008, but then pushed the release out to summer 2009. Now that summer is here, Intuit has pushed the release out to February 2010, leaving users with Quicken 2007 for several more months.
Mr. Gulbransen said the company decided to make "changes to everything from what the program does to how it looks." He added "We spent extra time building a reconcile mode for the new register, a robust Windows-to-Mac transfer function for new Mac users (and existing customers running Quicken on a Windows virtual machine), and redesigned the experience to make it look and feel like a native Mac application should."
The company seems to be more committed to the new February release window, and is even promising to kick off pre-order sales on October 12.
Promising a February launch also sets the company up to potentially release the new version of Quicken at Macworld Expo 2010. With Intuit's current track record, however, might not want to bet all their money on picking up their new copy of Quicken at the expo.