Cha-Ching, Midnight Apps' handy Quicken-killer that takes the pain out of managing your money, has received a minor update to v0.5.2. While the notable changes like UI improvements, bug fixes and confirmation dialogs when deleting items aren't much to write home about, the third change from the emailed press release is what has me excited: "upgraded database in preparation for version 1.0." I spoke with Juan Alvarez, lead developer of Cha-Ching, about an ETA for 1.0, and it's apparently slated to land before the end of April with some rocking new features and changes. Cha-Ching itself has received a major overhaul in preparation for the big 1.0, so stay tuned for more details and some pre-release screenshots as soon as we can publish them.Cha-Ching update brings fixes, 1.0 by April
Cha-Ching, Midnight Apps' handy Quicken-killer that takes the pain out of managing your money, has received a minor update to v0.5.2. While the notable changes like UI improvements, bug fixes and confirmation dialogs when deleting items aren't much to write home about, the third change from the emailed press release is what has me excited: "upgraded database in preparation for version 1.0." I spoke with Juan Alvarez, lead developer of Cha-Ching, about an ETA for 1.0, and it's apparently slated to land before the end of April with some rocking new features and changes. Cha-Ching itself has received a major overhaul in preparation for the big 1.0, so stay tuned for more details and some pre-release screenshots as soon as we can publish them.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-30-2007 @ 3:45PM
ZX said...
0.5.2 won't start!
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3-30-2007 @ 5:14PM
Ralph said...
I hope the final gets some Spotlight support...
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3-30-2007 @ 5:22PM
Henry Smith said...
TUAW seems to cover Cha-Ching fairly heavily, and the flavor always seems to connote that, finally, there is an option for Mac owners to use other than Quicken. In reality, Moneydance, has been available, and full-featured for some time now. How about mentioning it, or covering some comparisons of the two (i.e. Cha-Ching vs. Moneydance, heck even include Quicken if you want for completeness), rather than steering the Mac faithful toward entrusting their precious financial well-being to a beta software package. In my guesstimation, (and I have used Moneydance for some time now [thank God it brought an end to enduring the endless stream of Quicken's self-promoting ads which are intrinsically and obtrusively buried within the guts of Quicken's functionality]) even after Cha-Ching goes 1.0, it will most likely be quite some time and numerous updates before a user could reasonably expect it to attain functional completeness on par with either Moneydance or, dare I say it, Quicken. To infer, or worse to hype, otherwise, is just plain disingenuous and, ultimately, a disservice to your readers.
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3-30-2007 @ 9:59PM
Sam said...
For anyone who understand french.. you should try out www.monpetitcochon.com (means mypiggybank.com). IMO it's a lot better than cha ching. English version is on its way.
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3-30-2007 @ 11:38PM
mapin said...
Let's not forget iBank ! I started using it last month as my Quicken replacement, and it works very nicely.
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3-31-2007 @ 10:07AM
Dave Chartier said...
#3: Henry, you do bring up a great point that maybe a broader review of financial apps would be a great value to our readers. But this is a blog - not CNN. We blog about the things we're interested in and try to hit as many things we *think* our readers would be interested in. Personally, financial apps of any kind are a PITA. I stumbled on Cha-Ching a while ago (and if you check our Cha-Ching tag - http://tuaw.com/tag/cha-ching - you'll see we've barely covered it once a month), and I personally happen to like it since it doesn't make my mouse cry like Quicken does. So I blog about it. I even blogged Moneydance back in August of 2006:
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/08/22/moneydance-2006-cross-platform-finance-management/
It didn't excite me, and I think it's written in java and I don't touch any apps written in java. I use Mac OS X because I like the power of Cocoa. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone else was that excited about Moneydance either, so we don't go out of our way to write about it. Sorry, but again: this is a blog, not some pseudo-fake arbitrary news site.
That said, a review of financial apps is a great idea, especially since finances truly are an important and arguably neglected part of so many people's lives. I'll run it by the team, as it would likely need to be a group effort anyway; I don't even have a copy of Quicken, but I think some of our bloggers have different choice in finance apps. Stay tuned.
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3-31-2007 @ 1:34PM
Matthew Arevalo said...
@Dave
Thanks for the feedback. We know, well I know, that Cha-Ching has been a bumpy road. We've put out there, hey, if you want to try it, it's beta, go nuts. We're not forcing anyone into anything.
What we HAVE found is he ability to directly put user suggestions and feedback into a product that has now been well liked and is getting better.
As an aside, when you see the new features and functionality and look of 1.0, you will see where all our hard work has gone. With the help of a wonderful user community, we've managed to make strides that would seem unreachable without such close relations and open beta.
We'll basically be going from a rewrite to 1.0 in less then 6 months. This has been tough, but.. interesting :)
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4-01-2007 @ 1:08AM
Henry Smith said...
#6. Dave: Fair enough. Thanks for the reply and for the link to your blog on Moneydance. While a comparative review may be may be a bit of an odd duck for a "blog", it certainly has been done on TUAW in the past. While it may be aptly suited for the pages of MacWorld,etc., I'd bet a comparitive review piece in TUAW would be of interest to its readers. It might also be a good place to mention and further explain the technical concerns over such a program being written in Java (or any other specific software language/tool). Since the ad pages for a given app often don't mention such details (i.e., the language/tool) its difficult to impossible for a user to know that fact, and even more remote that they would recognize technical performance limitations that might arise from selecting one vice another.
On another vein: You mention that "...I think it's written in java and I don't touch any apps written in java...". That's intriguing, can you explain why you don't touch any apps written in java and, as a result, what apps that has shut you out of? Also, are you sure that Moneydance is written in Java? How does one tell/determine/know? Additionally, if there is merit to staying away from apps written in Java, I suggest that your readers would benefit from knowing what the list of such apps are (at least those that you know of). Perhaps you could use this as the topic of another blog post and share such a list with your readers?
Sincerely -- Peace out.
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4-08-2007 @ 7:44AM
Jeff Frederick said...
To Dave, Moneydance is a spectacular program. Has almost 90% of the features of Quicken for Win. It is an honest replacement for Quicken or MS Money. I find Cha-Ching seriously lacking. It's main deficiency is no on line banking features. ALL my banking is done online so it does me no good. MD on the other hand fully supports all my online banking needs. Yes, it is a java app and yes, it starts up a little slowly. But once loaded, its pretty zippy. The developer uses a Mac and developed it on a Mac. It definitely has a Cocoa interface! Please, PLEASE do reconsider Moneydance. Another review of the latest update may soothe all your fears. And Sean, the developer, does listen to user requests and add them to the program.
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