[psmith2.0]

This is one of those situations where I could see Apple providing a first-party, really nice (and easy-to-use) financial/accounting app. One that did everything Quickbooks and Quicken does, and, like all their other home-grown titles, is always updated to run in the latest OS and whatever architecture (M1 for now, and whatever the future holds).

It’s really the one obvious area they’ve not delved into. They’ve got music, video and photography solutions. And an Office-type of suite for documents, presentation and spreadsheets. Along with all the other things baked into their two OSes (email, browsing, contacts, messaging, maps, eBooks, calendar, health and fitness, media stores, video conferencing, etc.). With their focus on security/privacy and all their existing relationships with banks (from Apple Pay), along with all the integration they build into their stuff (how this hypothetical financial/accounting app could work seamlessly with Numbers to import/export data, generate reports, graphs, etc. And have it all synced via iCloud, so when you make an Apple Pay purchase on your phone, it automatically gets logged and is reflected on your other devices. And you can always manually enter other activity if needed, with it syncing/updating to all your other devices within seconds. It could’ve as simple (home banking/register keeping and tax-info duties), to small business accounting and payroll type of work, etc. I’ve thought about all this for years, Apple doing a killer financial/bookkeeping/accounting app, tapping in to all they’ve currently got in place (security, iCloud syncing, banking/credit card integration, working seamlessly with other relevant apps already in their stable, etc.) and doing something really slick and easy-to-use for the Mac/iOS using world. Because, currently, there isn’t. Folks (Yontsey and many more like him) are “held hostage” by Intuit or others who aren’t always on the ball in updating their stuff to work with what they no doubt see as a “sliver-base” of users. Apple, naturally, wouldn’t be doing that, as each release would be developed alongside the next major OS releases. When you start thinking about what all such an app could do, running on both Macs and iOS devices, you come up with a million ideas/scenarios of how nice it could be. I wonder if they’ve ever talked about/dabbled in that area? All the “long view” pieces to do such a thing seem to be in place (vs. 10 or so years ago), do it makes me wonder. This just strikes me, and has for a good 2-3 years now, as one of those areas where Apple could really do something amazing and appreciated on the software front.