Quicken 2012 helps you see how its plans to spend down credit card debt will help you save money. He has similar talking points as Patzer, but his time at Intuit has made him more realistic (or perhaps resigned) about the future of Quicken, the latest version of which, Quicken 2012, came out today. Instead, Aaron Forth, another Mint executive who came along with the acquisition, is at the wheel. Patzer, though, is no longer running the Quicken group at Intuit.
And by update it, he meant really improve it, not just add peripheral new features and re-skin the app every year, as they've been doing for about the last 10. He planned to integrate Quicken with Mint and rewrite the app from scratch to make it possible for Intuit developers to update it more frequently.
Patzer came in with grand visions and ideas to make Quicken a more modern and relevant app. (You can download Quicken Premier, Quicken Home Business, and Quicken Deluxe from CNET .) The meetings got a lot more interesting a few years ago, when Mint threw a monkey wrench into the personal finance software market, which led to Intuit acquiring Mint and bringing in its CEO, Aaron Patzer, to re-light the Quicken product line. Most years, I interview some honcho at Intuit who's running the personal finance division and we talk about where the category is going. Every year, Intuit releases a new version of Quicken.
