“Intuit Inc is looking to boost Quicken personal finance software sales by offering it as a service for $3 a month that can run on Apple Inc’s iPhone,” Jim Finkle reports Reuters.
“It hopes the product, which launches on January 8, will vastly expand Quicken’s 14 million users and boost the market penetration of a brand that already generates about 1.7 million new copies of software a year, Intuit senior vice president Rick Jensen told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday,” Finkle reports.
“Intuit has designed the product to appeal to younger consumers, people who may have used online banking for most of their adult lives, but do not use software to track those transactions,” Finkle reports.
Intuit “said they decided to tweak the product for the iPhone ahead of other devices because Apple enthusiasts tend to be early adopters of new technologies. They may be more likely to embrace a software as a service product, said Jim Del Favero, product manager for the Quicken group,” Finkle reports.
More here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ralph M” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: No word, yet, on whether or not it leaves iPhone’s Home screen intact. Hey, Intuit, how about making a feature-complete version of Quicken for Mac first? You don’t have the greatest rep among the most enthusiastic of “Apple enthusiasts” because of that, ya know? You’d think Apple Board member Bill Campbell, who is also, coincidentally, Chairman and former CEO of Intuit Corp. could get his coders to work or would at least be embarrassed to show his face at Apple BoD meetings, but nooo…
@MDN:
I just love your takes…
interesting concept.
fix quicken for mac first, then I will look at it.
but to be able to instantly categorize my spending on an iphone would be kinda cool.
Boy do they know. Pretty sure they’re working on it!
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If this lives up to the hype, it would be VERY cool. The main annoyance (for me) of finance software is having to sit down at a later time and record transactions that happened days/weeks ago. If I could do this in real time–easily and simply!–I might actually use such software for the first time in my life. I would DEFINITELY use it for business trip expenses. At $3/month, they even got the price right!
Being a Quicken beta tester for several years, I have to say I might not buy it right when it’s released, but they do tend to release relatively bug-free software. It’s jut not as functional as it could be compared to the PC version. Unfortunately, they didn’t hire the most efficient Mac programmers in the world. Apple and Microsoft have those. But they do a pretty good job.
When I get an iPhone, I’ll get this set up ASAP. I would love to track my finances better on my phone.
I should add, this desktop deleting bug with Quickbooks was a major exception to what I said in my previous comment.
MDN Magic word: somewhat – hehe
i just installed quicken for iphone and it miraculously deleted my desktop folder — i didn’t even know my iphone had a desktop to delete, but intuit found a way!! Blast!
Intuit: SCREW YOU! As MDN said, give us a feature-complete version of Quicken for the Mac first before you try to milk us out of an extra $3/month. Intuit is one of the worst Mac developers of all time.
Okay here we go – Intuits product line is slowly but surely converting to online subscription… Thanks but no thanks.
And don’t forget – Intuit is a MS company. Kind of like buying MS Office for Mac, but more subversive – Have a nice day.
Mr. Peabody: There was a buyout offer from Microsoft in 1995 but it fell through after U.S. D.O.J. scrutiny. Do you know something that the S.E.C. and the D.O.J. don’t?
http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/investors/corporate_gov/
I do not understand how Quicken can be released with bug after bug and never fixed. I have encountered many known bugs that give inaccurate reports which go unfixed. QuickBooks has a bug that deactivates the enter button.
I agree with most of the comments here. Intuit is about getting you hooked on their product for the yearly upgrades. They do not care about making a Mac product that works. Now they want to up the program to a monthly fee.
Look at a program like iBank to see what a Mac financial program should look like.
Years ago i was pretty anal about keeping up with expenses using Quicken. At the time, it seemed pretty important.
Now, with the advent of online banking, Quicken seems pretty pointless.
While online banking can’t do everything Quicken can do, it does enough to make Quicken worthless, at least for me. I can always check my balances, keep tabs on where I’ve spent my hard earned money, an have the bank e-mail me when my balance falls below a certain level.
MDN word = college Yeah.. I went to college.
Guys, if the Mac is going to make serious inroads into small business, then we need Quickbooks for Mac to do everything that Quickbooks for Windows can do. Screw upgrading Quicken so the Mac version equals the Windows version. The Mac version works fine already.
And doubly screw an iPhone version of Quicken. I can now do my online banking on my iPhone now using Safari and my bank’s web site–but I don’t! The iPhone touch keyboard is not the type of failsafe data entry device that I want to use to do serious financial transctions. I make enough mistakes typing on my Mac keyboard.
But maybe we are being too hard on Intuit. Maybe all this Mac activity at Intuit shows that they are starting to devote more resources to the Mac.
In the words of Borat: NOT!
Sounds like a nice product – except the same idea is available for free from “Expenseview.com”. Update my spending on the go for no charge at all then just export them to keep archived.
I use QuickBooks online and it is IE ActiveX ONLY. I write to complain to Intuit about twice a year and never get a response. How about an online version that works on a MAC before you start leaping to the iPhone. This from a company that was threatened by Microsoft for not selling the company to them.
This is purely riding Apple’s coat tales for Press. Don’t use the product!
No, 84 Mac Guy, Quicken for Mac does NOT work fine already.
Intuit needs to get their shit together for ALL Mac products,
Not just the ones important to some.
Also, I am not interested in this unless it syncs with the desktop version.
@Ampar
Well there’s “buyouts” then there’s “mergers”, do you know something I don’t?
This iPhone will self-destruct in 5 seconds….
This is one of the best I’ve recently read, looking forward to see your future posts, Thank you.
Personal Finance
If I could do this in real time–easily and simply!–I might actually use such software for the first time in my life.
That was interesting, if you want to Buy Acyclovir
It’s jut not as functional as it could be compared to the PC version. Unfortunately, they didn’t hire the most efficient Mac programmers in the world. Apple and Microsoft have those. But they do a pretty good job.
essays