It seems the most likely explanation for Intuit buying and immediately installing its founder and CEO, Aaron Patzer, as the new VP and general manager of Intuit’s personal finance group. Perhaps that confusion and intransigence on Intuit’s part was a sign of a larger problem with the management of the company’s software products.
In July 2009 the company announced another delay, to 2010, with an explanation that it was going “back to the drawing board” with the product. We got a preview of Quicken Financial Life in early 2009, but like a mirage in the desert, the product kept fading into the distance. That date came and went, and a new date was promised - summer 2009. In early 2008, the company announced it would completely rewrite Quicken, and promised a new product called Quicken Financial Life for Mac in fall of 2008. After that, more than a year went by with rumors escalating that the product was not long for this world. It’s been nearly four years since the most recent release of Quicken for the Mac, Quicken Mac 2007 ( ), released in mid-2006.
The new product offers a promising new interface, but faces a mass of built-up anger from users who feel betrayed by the company’s mismanagement of the product. After numerous false starts over several years, Intuit plans to announce the release of Quicken Essentials for Mac on Thursday.
