Flint's Blog

Me and My iPad

I've never been much of a gadget guy.  However, after reading some scintillating reviews for the iPad, I just had to have one.  My awesome wife surprised me with one for Father's day which perfectly coincided with a business trip I was about to take.

I have never owned an Apple product so didn't know what to expect.  So I open the box and my first surprise - where are all the manuals, registrations, warranties, and other stuff? The only thing in there is a small piece of paper with three instructions - plug in to your laptop, get iTunes, have fun...or something like that.   

After playing around for an hour, hooking into my work email, and getting used to not having a mouse or a keyboard, I was hooked.  Downloaded some books, downloaded a movie, and got some apps. Too easy.

On Sunday I left for a four day a business trip. After much internal debate, I decided to leave the laptop home and see if I could make it through the trip with just my iPad.  I've got a Blackberry but I still bring my laptop on every trip, so this was a big step for me.  

The result was great.  No lugging around my brick of a laptop and charger.  Not once did I regret leaving the laptop home.  If I got really desperate, there is even an app that let's me remote connect into my laptop which I haven't tried out yet.

The best feature for me is the startup time.  My laptop takes 5-10 minutes from powering up to being productive.  iPad is 5 seconds.  That adds up quickly.

It's easy for me to envision most people moving away from computers to tablets like the iPad.  This is just the first generation so it's only going to get better.  

Is Intuit on a Slow Slide to Oblivion?

I've been a huge fan of Intuit for a long time.  I used Quicken throughout the 90's and thought of it as the absolute model for what easy to use consumer software should be.  My first two businesses started out using QuickBooks.  I've even given Turbo Tax and some of the other ancillary products a whirl.  Intuit was one of the few companies that actually competed with Microsoft (MS Money) and by most accounts, emerged as the category winner.

However, like most packaged software vendors, you have to wonder if Intuit will be able to transition their business model to something more sustainable.  I don't have any inside information, and I don't think the fall will be rapid, but you can see the erosion taking place.

Just a a few data points.

1. Last year Microsoft announced they were discontinuing MS Money.  It could be that Quicken is just kicking their butts all over the place and they gave up.  However, it's not really in Microsoft's DNA to give up on anything.  My guess is that Microsoft simply believed the category was contracting and it just wasn't interesting enough any more.  People are just not buying a lot of PC based software any more.

2. QuickBooks continues to dominate the small business category but Intuit has been unsuccessful building/buying a product for companies that need more.  In 2002 Intuit purchased a popular accounting system called Eclipse as part of their strategy to go more upstream.  After several years of not finding any real traction within Intuit, Eclipse was unloaded on Activant.  Our business has graduated from QuickBooks into the web based product Intacct. It simply is more robust and the SAAS model fits our business perfectly.  Even SAP, the giant ERP vendor is moving to the SAAS model with their ByDesign offering.  Intuit does offer an online version of QuickBooks but it doesn't even have the feature set of the regular QuickBooks.

3. TurboTax continues to lead in a number of Reviews, but really how long before these products are indistinguishable?  They all seem to be at the point now of adding all of those features that you'll never really use.

Intuit recognizes that they need to grow in other ways.  Last year they purchased the popular web site Mint.com for $170 Million.  This seemed like a massive overpayment for a free service, with a revenue model that was still evolving.  I've used Mint.com since a few months after their launch and while it's a cool service which aggregates your financial info from a lot of sources, it really didn't feel that much better than Yodlee was in the late 90's. However, Intuit must have felt like they had to do something to appeal to the younger generation that certainly wasn't out buying Quicken.

My biggest beef is more personal and it's with Intuit's lack of direction with Paytrust, the online bill presentment and payment company that I started in 1998, left in 2001, and that Intuit purchased in 2005.  I still use Paytrust, it's the only service on the market where you can both receive and pay ALL of your bills online.  Paytrust won all sorts of awards in the early 2000's but it's grown very tired under Intuit's watch. No new features have been added in years, and one of the killer features called SmartBalance, which automatically balances your checking account, has been broken for most banks for several years.  

So I was quite surprised last week when I logged into Paytrust and saw an announcement for a new feature called RealBalance powered by Mint.com.  Did someone at Intuit finally realize that this was the killer feature that made Paytrust users happy?  Apparently that was the plan, but not the execution. Not only did it not work for most users including me, but several days after launching, an email was sent out declaring:

Thanks for choosing to use our new Real Balance® Powered by Mint feature. The response to our partnership with Mint.com has been incredible—so incredible that we’ve realized we need to make a few technical adjustments to better enhance your experience. As a result, Real Balance® Powered by Mint will be temporarily unavailable while we make these updates.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.  Intuit, the trendsetter in personal financial management software, failing on their first attempt at integrating two of their popular services.  

As my kids would say - Seriously? Seriously?