I suspect TY2026 will be the last desktop version. macOS 28, to be released probably in fall 2027, won't have Rosetta, so anyone who upgrades, or buys a new Mac after that, would not be able to run TurboTax for TY2027. QuickBooks 2021 came out Sept 2020 right before Apple released its first Macs with Apple Silicon (Nov 2020). They could have even continued to develop it for Intel since Rosetta would enable continuing to run it but nevertheless that was the last version.Quicken for Mac has already been mentioned on this thread as a program that didn't make the transition from PowerPC to Intel. Quicken is not a game. Quicken was being actively developed, and updates were being released. However, Intuit would not port Quicken for Mac from PowerPC to x86. When Apple discontinued PowerPC compatibility, Intuit discontinued Quicken for Mac.This isn’t really relevant to a product like Turbotax that gets a new version released every year. Nearly all of those “left behind” programs are things that the developers decided to not update at all. So no new versions period, not just no new versions for the new architecture. Games are a great example, they’ll generally be released then maybe an update or two, and done. Developer moves on to working on the next game. Turbotax is different, it gets updated every year anyway. So there’s really no excuse for not also recompiling it for Arm.
Intuit has a track record of poor software development practices. It operates in an industry with an annual release cycle, so it will take shortcuts to push software out on time. Every year, it decides to fix the problems next year, and then it doesn't fix them next year either.
Intuit could keep compiling Quicken for Windows without paying back the technical debt. It can also keep compiling TurboTax for Windows without paying back the technical debt. It couldn't do this with Quicken for Mac, and it is very likely that it can't do this with TurboTax for Mac.
Microsoft has a track record of backward compatibility. Apple has a track record of requiring developers to keep up or get left behind. Some developers will decide that they'd rather get left behind.
Statistics: Posted by billthecat — Tue Dec 02, 2025 12:44 am — Replies 31 — Views 1923