Notes on QuickBooks 2006 and Vista compatibility

More on the QuickBooks 2006/Vista issue:

George Ou claims Intuit does not deserve a pass when it comes to the compatibility issue with their 2006 and older QuickBooks products.

According to Ou (taken from his ZDNet blog), a QuickBooks representative answered his questions in a telephone call, and explained that Intuit "declined to seek Windows XP certification [for QuickBooks] for all these years and they're just now making the necessary modifications for QuickBooks 2007."

Why should Intuit would worry about Windows software certification? For one thing, the vast majority of computer users run Windows. BusinessWeek.com reports that Windows' closest competitor, Mac, held only 1.9% of the global PC market as of 2005. If your greatest sales opportunity lies in the Windows PC market, then you may want to develop your Windows applications to be as usable, certifiable, and generation-neutral as possible in that market. If it works on XP, make sure it'll work on whatever Microsoft sells next.

There are a handful of ways to develop an application that does not care about the underlying operating system. For example, Sun's Java platform can effectively run applications on almost any PC, irrespective of which OS the application was actually written on. GotomyPC has been running on Java for some time now. Bottom line is it works. So does running web-based applications based on AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) with a SQL back-end, for example. Kiko comes to mind!

The point is that Intuit apparently waited a long time to seek Windows software certification. QuickBooks 2007 is their first foray into honoring the end-user in this regard and should be considered a landmark for the company. Questions remain... Where is their press release? When does Bennett get his ribbon, huh Steve?

I won't venture to say they will keep this architecture, but it's a step in a forward direction. Eventually, the cleverest developers will probably sell hosted solutions. In the case of Intuit that might look like a locally hosted LAMP or ASP.NET/MS SQL back end with an AJAX web-based front end. How do you license an application like that? Who knows. Intuit could pioneer a hybrid license similar to Microsoft's user-based Client Access License. Something like that might need to parse web server logs or perform SQL lookups to audit and authorize access.  They could even integrate the service with the Active Directory if they want to ease the multi-user deployment process.

I hope their is still space in the QuickBooks suggestion box.

Comments

[netjustin]

David, I hear what you are saying. To be clear, Quickbooks 2007 is in fact compatible with Vista. It's actually certified on the new platform. Is the multi user license for QB 2007 not available in the UK?

[david lighter]

I spoke to quickbooks in the uk trying to order 5 licenses. The girl on the sales desk said that some users were "using it" on vista however it is not compatible. When I asked if it was compatible, they said they had no deadline. I can't run with a company that charges full price for upgrades and can't even spend the money or time to get a working version. Quickbooks is the only company that is having vista compatibility, and there is no reason why it should not have been done by now..