[X4U] Lobby Intuit at Macworld SF

[Jim Robertson]

I've been an online banking user now for over a decade. I began with Union
Bank of California when I lived in San Jose, where they have local branches.
When I moved to Santa Rosa, where there ARE no local UBC branches, I looked
for alternatives and found none. Even the world's largest banks; e.g., Bank
of America, didn't support direct online banking from within Quicken for
Mac, because Intuit charges a separate license fee for each platform. My
local credit union IT representative claimed a few days ago that Intuit's
charge for this is $100,000 per year!

I've been told many times that the actual datastream that flows in each
direction in an online session  (generating a QXF file) is identical no
matter whether the user is in Windows or Mac (except that the software
identifies itself as Quicken for Windows or Quicken for the Mac), and that
the only justification for the separate charge is Intuit's business model to
maximize revenue.

A few years ago, when Apple's renaissance included adding Intuit's CEO to
its Board of Directors, I thought we'd see progress. Perhaps the fact that
Intuit continues to release versions of Quicken for the Mac is evidence of
that, but they EOL older versions' access to online banking periodically so
force users to upgrade (that's true whether on uses the Windows or Mac
version).

Intuit's booth at Macworld is usually pretty busy. I would urge all
attendees to drop by their booth, and if they offer a chance to fill out
feedback cards, make yours a reasoned assertion that Mac users don't deserve
this second class citizenship, making certain you mention you're aware that
it's not the banks' fault; i.e., it's not a technical issue at all, but just
the banks' business decision not to pay ransom to Intuit to support the OS
with a smaller marketshare.

It amazes me that Bill Campbell can't be lobbied by the other members of
Apple's Board of Directors to right this indignation, but perhaps that's why
I'm not a business executive

Jim Robertson
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