TurboTax 2007 doesn't run on MacOSX 10.3.9

On Feb 29, 2008, at 4:42 PM, David Moon wrote:

> Time to abandon Intuit and find a tax software vendor who cares
> about their customers.

Long since, IMHO. :-)

> Anyone care to recommend one?

I've been a satisfied customer of TaxCut for a number of years
(except, of course, the year they didn't support Macs). Their web
site claims that TaxCut supports 10.3.9 or newer (I can't say; I'm on
10.4.11).

YMMV.
-Dave

At 3:42 PM -0800 2/29/2008, David Moon wrote:

>I was shocked when I installed TurboTax 2007 on MacOSX 10.3.9 and
>found that double-clicking it does nothing. Some poking around
>discovered link errors, and further poking around discovered fine
>print on the box saying OSX 10.4 is required. Their support web site
>contains a bunch of unconvincing excuses for this requirement. Even
>their "contact us" web page does not work in OSX 10.3.9, which I
>guess insulates them from a lot of angry feedback.
>
>I am hardly going to buy new faster hardware and a new operating
>system just to run their lousy application!
>
>Time to abandon Intuit and find a tax software vendor who cares
>about their customers. Anyone care to recommend one?

David:

A year ago or so I gave in and bought Tiger for my G4 because more
and more updates of software I use were coming out Tiger required.
There is also Mac software that is Intel required. Soon I expect to
see stuff I want to use become Leopard required. TurboTax is one
program where failing to update is not an option if you want to use
it next year.

Intuit is hardly alone.

Computer hardware at consumer level seldom comes with
warranties/service policies of longer than 3-5 years. If it lasts
longer, great as long as it meets your needs.

I don't know what else you do with your Mac but sooner or later its
going to have a problem not worth fixing. Or you may need more RAM
for something than your Mac supports. My Mac feels slow in Tiger and
it meets official minimums for Leopard.

A newer Mac--doesn't have to be the newest model--may impress you
with its speed.

--Jim

> 8. Re: TurboTax 2007 doesn't run on MacOSX 10.3.9

It seems to be working okay under Leopard 10.5.2. Of course, I have
just opened it once. But tomorrow.

John Ferman
jwfermanties2.net

David... Obviously, we disagree with your suggestion that Intuit does not care about their customers. It's just the opposite. The fact that we completely rewrote the TurboTax Mac application from the ground up demonstrates our long term commitment to Mac customers. We've been supporting them virtually from the beginning of our history, even in the days when their share of our units was somewhere around 2%. The application our engineers developed this past year ensures we have an application that supports the development/testing tools we use and the functionality our customers expect going forward.

It was a difficult decision to support 10.4 and above, but the reasons for doing so were quite compelling. As you know our web site contains a much more detailed explanation of our reasons. They are not "a bunch of unconvincing excuses", but simply the facts. We're not making excuses, we're just telling it like it is. They are the facts without any sugar coating.

Yes, we know this OS requirement really frustrated some of our Mac customers and we regret that. But going forward, I believe all Mac customers will be rewarded with a far superior TurboTax program.

Bob Meighan VP, TurboTax

Just to add a positive note from a an independent user; I have been
using Intuit software (Quicken and TurboTax) on Macs for about as long
as I can remember. In all that time I have had only one problem (a
failed upgrade), and that was handled promptly and courteously by
Intuit tech support. And I would add that, in my recollection, Quicken
was the first program of its type to provide on-line banking that
really worked on the Mac.

Marley

This is probably the last year I will use TurboTax (which I am actually running on my work computer, a Dell laptop, which has proven rather inconvenient). I am stuck at 10.3.9 and, for the foreseeable future, cannot afford to buy a new Mac. For me, using hrblock.com next year seems like the best option.

At 4:52 AM -0800 03/06/2008, smp wrote:
>This is probably the last year I will use TurboTax (which I am
>actually running on my work computer, a Dell laptop, which has
>proven rather inconvenient). I am stuck at 10.3.9 and, for the
>foreseeable future, cannot afford to buy a new Mac. For me, using
>hrblock.com next year seems like the best option.

Why not upgrade your current mac to Tiger? I have 10.4.11 installed
on my lime iMac (333 MHz) and did my 2006 taxes on it (spiffy new
Intel iMac for the 07 return, though!).
--

tom coradeschi
tcoraskylands.ibmwr.org

On Feb 29, David Moon wrote:
>Time to abandon Intuit and find a tax software vendor who cares
>about their customers. Anyone care to recommend one?

Last year I tried out H&R Block's TaxCut, and it turned out
satisfactorily. This year's version is definitely better. State tax
versions are available; the one for Missouri worked just fine.
Price is reasonable.

Environment: G4 MDD, OS X 10.3.9

Carl

RE "Just to add a positive note from a an independent user; I have been Using Intuit software (Quicken and TurboTax) on Macs for about as long As I can remember. In all that time I have had only one problem (a Failed upgrade), and that was handled promptly and courteously by Intuit tech support. "

I'm sorry, but I have to put in my 02¢. I know this thread is about TurboTax, but I've had some lousy tech supports solutions with Quicken 2007 R2. I've been to level 3 tech support twice in complaint about the poor speed and accuracy of the magic Quotes button I click to find out how much $$$ I've lost each day.

For years Quicken would trot right off and fetch all the day's current prices licketey split, but since Q2006, it may take me 10-25 clicks of the Quotes button each night to finally get all the day's securities prices. (I don't have that many!)

Twice going through New Delhi support I was finally connected to 3rd level tech support people directly at Intuit in the US who called me, and was told that they were aware of the problem, but it wasn't going to ever get fixed. When pressed about why, I was told that it was a "bug in the Mac version of Quicken that would not get fixed."

This is the lamest thing I've ever heard! I do wonder whether Intuit wants Mac business and cares for us Mac users.

Thanks for allowing me to vent! :-)

George

At 3:42 PM -0800 2/29/08, David Moon wrote:
>I was shocked when I installed TurboTax 2007 on MacOSX 10.3.9 and
>found that double-clicking it does nothing.

Sound like a bug to me. The app should at least say it needs
biggerbetterfastermore. Dying quietly is unacceptable.

At 3:18 AM -0800 3/5/08, Bob Meighan VP, TurboTax wrote:
>Obviously, we disagree with your suggestion that Intuit does not
>care about their customers. It's just the opposite.

"care" ... does that include support? I went to the Intuit TurboTax
web site today, to see if there was some information about our latest
TurboTax crashes[*] -- nada. Besides having little to no real
technical information, the site was abysmally slow (even over my 20
Mbps connection).

Then I tried to send email (your Contact Us) form, and was presented
with difficult-to-read light gray text on a white page, and an itty
bitty input box -- 3 inches wide by 1/2 inch high -- in which to type
the problem report. Yea, that page sure gives me the impression that
Intuit "cares".

After emailing that report (which never did display the info it
collected from the browser, like it said it would), I did the "Call
Us" form. Three hang-ups later, I'm writing this...

>It was a difficult decision to support 10.4 and above, but the
>reasons for doing so were quite compelling.

A lot of the apps I use have done this recently, so I don't have much
of a problem with it. Those apps, however, have gotten faster and
more reliable. TurboTax 2007 is far slower than 2006, and much less
stable!

>The fact that we completely rewrote the TurboTax Mac application
>from the ground up demonstrates our long term commitment to Mac
>customers.

Development commitment is good, but I think Intuit needs to
follow-through with both QA and support.


[*] Turbotax locks up for a minute or two, then crashes when you try
to print a "supporting details" form. This occurs consistantly on
both our tiger'd Macs, both in TurboTax 2007 as-distributed, and with
all the updates applied. The only "footprint" left by the crash is
in console.log - no actual crash log is ever created - dozens and
dozens of these:
TurboTax 2007(6559,0xa000ed88) malloc: *** vm_allocate(size=1069056)
failed (error code=3)
TurboTax 2007(6559,0xa000ed88) malloc: *** error: can't allocate region
TurboTax 2007(6559,0xa000ed88) malloc: *** set a breakpoint in
szone_error to debug

This crash... it is so easily reproduced. There's nothing obscure
about it. Even guys on IRC, living in far away states were able to
reproduce it with no problemo. That it exists not only in the main
distribution AND in today's update tells me that perhaps Intuit's QA
folx are a bit too busy eating pizza or something.

FWIW,
- Dan.

At 6:48 AM -0700 3/20/08, Dan wrote:
>At 3:18 AM -0800 3/5/08, Bob Meighan VP, TurboTax wrote:
>>Obviously, we disagree with your suggestion that Intuit does not
>>care about their customers. It's just the opposite.
[snip]

Yesterday I wrote Intuit regarding the consistent crash of TurboTax
2007 while trying to print supporting details forms. I have now
received, via email, a useless off-point semi-boilerplate answer.

Besides being poorly written, with bad grammar, the response includes
this admonition:

   **Please do not reply to this message. This e-mail was
   sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept
   incoming e-mail.

That certainly doesn't show that Intuit cares at all.

So... What is the proper procedure here for following up? The form
on Intuit's web site provides no way of responding in-context...

Thanks,
- Dan.
--
- Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth

I am running OS-X 10.5.2. I bought TurboTax Home& Business 2007 instead of Premier because H&B could print 1099-MISC for non-employees. I could not even find where in the interview to do that or even in the forms view. After contacting support I found out that only the Windows version could do that. Nice job, Intuit.

I am at 10.5.2 OS-X. I had a double-click problem, too in the NonCash Contributions Worksheet. For some reason, the interview in EasyStep does not ask the source (purchase, gift, inherited) of the stock being donated like it did in 2006 or how the fair market value was determined. It defaults "purchased" and "comparative sales" into the worksheet. Both are wrong for my return. But I can't change anything in the forms view.

It took three emails and five long telephone conversations with support to recognize the bug. But no solution was offered. All the support folks were very nice but at first they didn't want to try to replicate the problem on a Mac because it was in another room. When someone went to do it it did not even have Home & Business loaded on it.

The real problem with support at TT is that there is no history of previous emails and calls so each time they offer solutions that I already know don't work. You cannot ask to talk to someone you talked to before. Five frustrating hours not including this time.

On Apr 10, 2008, at 8:30 AM, BillyBoy wrote:

> I am running OS-X 10.5.2. I bought TurboTax Home& Business 2007
> instead of Premier because H&B could print 1099-MISC for non-
> employees. I could not even find where in the interview to do that
> or even in the forms view. After contacting support I found out that
> only the Windows version could do that. Nice job, Intuit.

I used the same program to do my taxes. One question I have is what
number did you call to actually reach someone in Tech Support. That
was the frustrating thing for me. Otherwise, the application made
doing a complicated task very easy.

Rick

SAVED AT LAST MINUTE: TURBOTAX 2007 CRASHES ON PRINTING! ON HP DESKJET! REINSTALLED EVERYTHING, TURNED OFF APPLICATIONS, ETC. THE ONLY THING THAT WORKED: avoid printing from within the program [after error check etc] just go to the menu, file, page setup and PRINT. can select which forms to print with or without supp documents. this worked! other possibilities if it did not work: save as a PDF and try printing that with a different program, not turbotax. OR, using TT2007, do screen shots of each form, and print those[suggested by someone in some group found by googling "tt2007, print crash" thank you! masked man

bradclif8

On 15-Apr-2008, at 03:12, bradclif8 wrote:
> SAVED AT LAST MINUTE: TURBOTAX 2007 CRASHES ON PRINTING! ON HP
> DESKJET! REINSTALLED EVERYTHING, TURNED OFF APPLICATIONS, ETC. THE
> ONLY THING THAT WORKED: avoid printing from within the program
> [after error check etc] just go to the menu, file, page setup and
> PRINT. can select which forms to print with or without supp
> documents. this worked! other possibilities if it did not work: save
> as a PDF and try printing that with a different program, not
> turbotax. OR, using TT2007, do screen shots of each form, and print
> those[suggested by someone in some group found by googling "tt2007,
> print crash" thank you! masked man

I printed my taxes several times from TurboTax and saw no crashes. In
fact, other than refusing to install its last update, I really had no
problems with TT this year.