By Katie Marsal

Published: 05:00 PM EST

Financial software maker Intuit disclosed this week plans to release a long anticipated update to its Quicken application for Mac users sometime during the summer of 2009.

The software, which was first previewed at last January's Macworld Expo, is being re-written from the ground up as a Universal application that better utilizes modern-day Mac OS X technologies like CoreData and Cover Flow.

It's also adopting a more streamlined interface akin to an early version of iTunes, with a sidebar positioned to the left and a workspace to the right that will display registers, statements, and other reports in Cover Flow mode.

As such, Intuit plans celebrate its rise from Apple's era of Carbon-based applications by completely rebranding Quicken for Mac as "Quicken Financial Life for Mac" when the software hits the market next summer.

Although the software was initially scheduled for release this past fall, the company revealed on Monday that it will miss that target by at least 9 months. Word of the new release date came as the software maker urged users to join an expanded Quicken Financial Life for Mac beta program.

"Due to overwhelming interest in the beta, at this time we cannot accommodate your request to participate," Intuit said in an email to one AppleInsider reader whose application was rejected from the beta program. "We expect to release Quicken Financial Life for Mac in summer 2009." 

Several other readers reported being accepted into the program, however, and were immediately provided a link to download a 123MB image file containing the second beta of Quicken Financial Life for Mac. (Readers interested in joining the program can apply through this link. Edit: Intuit has asked that we remove the link.)



The distribution includes a read me file [PDF] highlighting some of the design changes from legacy versions of Quicken, namely a move towards organizing data through tags rather than categories and classes.

Intuit is expected to preview the latest beta of Quicken Financial Life for Mac at its newly-expanded booth at next week's Macworld Expo. Meanwhile, readers interested in additional details can check out AppleInsider's report from last Macworld.