MacGourmet Deluxe

User Reviews

• terrible product and tech support

  shelleyjenNovember 26, 2014

  Pros

  no pros for the new version

  Cons

  terrible- would give it zero stars if I could. The company I would also give zero stars. I have been raving about the old version of this product for years until I was forced to "upgrade" due to the old version no longer being supported. Now my shopping lists no longer sync. Customer service is absolutely non existent and tech support no longer responds to calls or emails since they can't figure out the problem. As far as I'm concerned it is theft for them to take money for something that doesn't work. Of course you can't reach anyone at the company to even try to get your money back. I'm so disappointed as this program was like my right hand to me. I was constantly using it and have spent thousands of hours creating the database. I have been promoting this product for years and this is the treatment I get.

  Summary

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• MOSTLY GOOD

  mrsmouselipsSeptember 12, 2014

  Pros

  Easy to use

  Cons

  Crashes for no apparent reason. Menu planning feature is woefully lacking and mostly useless.

  Summary

  With each software update I hope the crashing problem will be addressed and it never is. Crashes don't happen very time I save or delete a recipe but certainly more often than it should. If the crashing problem were resolved I would give this 5 stars.

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• Upgrade to 4.0 has been a DISASTER

  gsankaryNovember 28, 2013

  Pros

  Good place to keep recipes, easy to search and display. Integrated shopping list. The ability to import from websites is very cool. In the last version all of this functionality worked great. Ability to save data in the cloud very helpful. In the new version not so much.

  Cons

  Latest upgrade has been a disaster. Shopping lists are no longer editable. Program freezes up when in the weekly meal planner. Corrupted data between upgrades. This is almost unusable in it's current form.

  Summary

  I love the functionality of this program, especially the ability to import from the web and created a shopping list from a meal plan. But, much of that stuff doesn't work in the new version.

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• Actual program 5 stars...tech support 2 stars.

  giarraputorAugust 31, 2013

  Pros

  Have not used all of the aspects of the program. I keep my recipes and can access them easily. For the websites that are "connected" it is easy to download the recipes.

  Cons

  My complaint is that it crashed and tech support has not been able to fix it after 30+ days. I have sent them all the info that has been asked for, including the recipe box. Since I rely on this program, this has been a hardship. The response at first was quick but now I have to send emails to find out any info and only hear back "working on it."

  Summary

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• Good software

  jamesworldJuly 19, 2013

  Pros

  It's beautiful, easy to use, does a lot of stuff I never thought of doing, like importing recipes from websites. Very cool feature.

  Cons

  Like all software, not everything works like it's supposed to work all the time. Hey, that's like life!

  Summary

  I've entered loads of data into recipe programs to have them die and take my data with them. Looks like this company will stay around long enough to improve the product and support it properly. I like that. It's important to me because I'm in it for the long haul.

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• Very Satisfied with this App!

  jlovebug719November 22, 2012

  Pros

  Recipe import from websites, Cupboard find feature, Nutrition calculator, Recipe scaling, Ability to store multiple photos per recipe, Wine Notes, Searching and Smart lists, Meal planning, Shopping lists, iPad and iPhone apps

  Cons

  Syncing (buggy if not hard wired), Shopping list feature doesn't always group same ingredient in multiple recipes, Notes feature is pretty basic

  Summary

  I have used this application for a couple years and have thoroughly enjoyed and recommended it to several friends. I love the ease of adding recipes to my library as I bump into them online. Preparing menus for holidays and dinner parties is so much easier than it used to be. I like having my recipes sync'd to my iPhone. More than once I've looked up a recipe at the grocery store to determine exact ingredients. I read the bad ratings previously reported and have to believe those accounts are due to much earlier revs. of the application. I have used tech support 3 or 4 times and found Michael to be very responsive; he's solved my problem each time. I don't use the cookbook feature. So, I can't speak to that but do take advantage of all the other features. For the longest time, we had family recipes that we enjoyed but didn't REALLY know how nutritional they were. I like the editable embedded nutritional data base as it allows us to make smarter choices about meal preparation. I also really like that the application "behaves" very much like typical Apple software. Many of the "Apple conveniences" exist in this design as well. I think this is a terrific application!

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• waste of time and money

  foodie54June 25, 2012

  Pros

  Will import without a problem from internet etc (albeit rather counter intuitive) but virtually everything else is awkward or doesn't work at all.

  Cons

  Try to change an ingredient quantity....impossible. Try to convert standard to metric...has NO CLUE!!! A pain to sort and organize. "Help" is completely useless. Difficult to navigate. Step after step to move your information and end up someplace OTHER than where you want to be and no fix in sight!

  Summary

  If you have any library at all (over the years I had collected about 1000 recipes using Master Cookbook which in later versions became just as awful; original designer I assume made his bucks and bailed) this is terrible so don't invest your hours and hours and hours of time. Recipes can be detailed and require a tremendous about of tweaking to get right, this program was written by a "boil the bag" cook...completely out to lunch. In the end you end up with a useless piece of software and just too exhausted to start all over again. I really thought going to a "Mac" product would offer some semblance of quality in design...NO SO. Sorry I don't have a suggestion of what else to try but I can tell you MacGourmet Deluxe is NOT it.

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• Could not import recipes

  DArtistNMApril 27, 2012

  Pros

  Reasonably priced; technical support; free trial

  Cons

  Even with tech help, could not download my recipes in .mx2 format into the program. It SHOULD have worked --- but it didn't. Too bad. I am trying to get away from PC programs.

  Summary

  Will uninstall the program....not of any use to me without ability to import.

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• Great for recipes, not so great for making a cookbook.

  MsCoyoteCaDecember 9, 2011

  Pros

  Easy to use. Very nice formatting.

  Cons

  You cannot create chapters like a real cookbook. The name of the new chapter will share a page with your 1st recipe in the chapter. If each new chapter had a divider page that you could use to title your new chapter on it's own page, I would really like this program.

  Summary

  Easy to use for collecting and storing recipes, but will not work if you ant to print and publish a cookbook with chapters.

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• excellent app for managing meal planning and prep

  Mary MarshburnSeptember 30, 2011

  Pros

  recipes are scalable produces shopping lists from meal plans

  Cons

  not completely intuitive to use, but not difficult either

  Summary

  Worth the price and then some.

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