software

Appears that with the coming of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, we are once again faced with various peripherals that cease to function correctly. I often do work that requires a serial port.  I’ve carried a Keyspan USA-19HS with me in my briefcase for close to a decade (maybe more).  I’ve always been able to get it to work properly, but recently, with my upgrade to a 15″ MacBook Pro Retina Display and subsequent upgrade to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, my trusty little friend may have met his day.  Keyspan does not show a driver that supports OS X 10.9 and loading the 10.8 driver resulted in no change from not having the driver. I...

Over the last 6 years, IGG Software has continued to lengthen their lead in the Macintosh Personal Finance space, becoming the dominant player assisting you with all aspects of your Financial Life (ironically, that’s what the aborted attempt at re-writing Quicken was supposed to be called).  Unfortunately, as I predicted, Intuit has only made one improvement to Quicken Essentials for Mac since I wrote my article 4 years ago:  you can now export to TurboTax (wow). But I digress, this article is about iBank 5, the new offering from IGG Software in the iBank line.  A piece of software I’ve been running (and loving) since 2011. The Updates Several new features in iBank 5 will have Macintosh finance...

A year ago I upgraded from Quicken 2007 for Macintosh to Quicken Essentials 2010 for Macintosh. I wrote about that upgrade in my article entitled Quicken Essentials for Mac – The Bare Minimum. In that article I went through my upgrade experience and got the reader setup on Quicken Essentials. I then went over the decision criteria between Quicken Essentials and iBank 3. I made the decision to upgrade to Quicken Essentials, but only by the smallest of margins. It was basically the best of two bad options. I had been a Quicken user for over a decade and Quicken Essentials maintained the feeling of a Macintosh personal finance application. iBank 3 was different and had some performance problems that weren’...

The Problem I was recently perusing my /var/log/system.log file under OS X Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.6), also available by running the Console application in your Utilities folder and selecting system.log, when I noticed several error messages that bothered me: osascript[236]: Error loading /Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types: dlopen(/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:\n /Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types: no matching architecture in universal wrapper Safari[239]: Initializer-based scripting additions have been deprecated. Please update this addition: "/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax" That last message basically...

I’ve entered my last transaction into Quicken 2007 for Mac. I’m tired of the interface, it’s the last PowerPC application I have on my Macintosh (I want to uninstall Rosetta), and it’s clear to me that while no alternative solution is perfect, I have to move forward. The two leading candidates for me to move to are Quicken Essentials 2010 for Mac and iBank. This will be my review of iBank. Both products will be reviewed from the perspective of a Quicken 2007 for Mac user, so bear that in mind as you read them. The Quicken Essentials 2010 for Mac review will be published after the February 25th launch of Quicken Essentials, at Intuit’s...