If it is one thing I know about Mac users, they want 'to be Mac users'. They want and expect a world of products to revolve around 'the Mac'. What they don't expect is to have to 'reach out' via some other program or browser into a 'windows world' to get what they need or want.
While Mac users have been able to finagle their browsers to access QuickBooks Online (QBO) they have not been able to use QBO in a true "Mac way", but with Intuit's release of the QuickBooks Mac App, now they can.
Intuit's addition of the QuickBooks Mac App, which makes QBO a "Mac" experience for Mac users, is really an extension of their multi-platform work they have been engineering to make QuickBooks Online work and function, in the way expected, regardless of platform upon which it was being used (Android device, Windows desktop, or Apple iOS devices like the iPad).
QuickBooks 'for Mac' had already been reconfigured to look more like QBO in so many ways (even moreso than QuickBooks for windows), and now Intuit is hoping that loyal QuickBooks for Mac fans can be brought over to 'the cloud side' with this new QuickBooks Mac App.
While I don't have 'a Mac' with which to test this new QuickBooks Mac App right now, I believe that from the information Intuit has released today (even if 'the other guy' got his skinny on this early), it appears that a lot of Mac users are going to be very happy with the special features that make QuickBooks Online appear just as though it had been Mac 'native' all along. [Editor's Addition: Here is a link to another great article in Intuit's Accountants News by Victoria Cameron about this new App.]
Because QuickBooks for Mac has had a much closer 'feature set' to the feature set existing in QuickBooks Online, I suspect that a lot of QuickBooks for Mac users will see this 'new App' as the perfect time to switch to "QuickBooks in the cloud" thus making their QuickBooks data available to them with all the creature comforts of their Apple technology (Mac, iPad and iPhone) regardless of device since they are almost all 'anything Apple, everything Apple' users. Intuit promises to make 'switching safe and easy' and will even import QuickBooks for Mac user files for you.
With this change, the pendulum toward QuickBooks Online may have just 'swung' in Intuit's direction, at least as far as loyal Apple users are concerned.