UI with Modern Standards

Zoolook

This is more of a question than a suggestion - will Quicken Windows ever migrate to a UI with the kind of modern standards the Mac version has, or most web-based applications have? I am talking about things like re-ordering columns with drag and drop, or look-ahead searching throughout the UI (for example linking something to a parent category should not need scrolling), graphs and charts that don't look like Excel '95, pivot-based reporting, a UI that doesn't freeze for 5 - 10 seconds every time you accept a match because the entire application is running on one thread etc.

This isn't meant to be a complaint, but the Windows UI really does make the application look old and tired. I know there's a huge amount of legacy code, but it's been 5 years since some hints of big improvements was made and it's still fundamentally the same as it was in the late 90's.

Jim_Harman

This would be a nice improvement, but IMO Quicken development should focus on making connections to banks and financial institutions more reliable and fixing longstanding bugs.

bmciance

I agree with Jim.  Plus, I would also worry that to make those type of changes they might have to rewrite the app from scratch like they did with the Mac version and we would be stuck with a very limited program for some time while they recreate all of the current features.  

Zoolook

Jim_Harman said:

This would be a nice improvement, but IMO Quicken development should focus on making connections to banks and financial institutions more reliable and fixing longstanding bugs.

Well I can't disagree with that, but in some ways that's a moving target and more of a services problem than application problem. For some time I had QuickenWin, QuickenMac, Banktivity, YNAB, Personal Capital and little-old SimpliFi all running in parallel (for a review) and it was interesting to see which platforms had the fewest issues with connectivity over a period of time. Believe it or not, Quicken is one of the best although QuickenMac is slightly more reliable than QuickenWin, but gets data much later than QuickenWin. My Discover card on Mac is about 2 - 3 days behind what it is in Windows.

Sorry long answer... tldr; I agree with you - but I think all of Quicken's services should be using the same, most realiable back-end.

Zoolook

bmciance said:

I agree with Jim.  Plus, I would also worry that to make those type of changes they might have to rewrite the app from scratch like they did with the Mac version and we would be stuck with a very limited program for some time while they recreate all of the current features.  

I am sure you're right - but perhaps a branch isn't a bad idea if you can migrate your data. I can't imagine QuickenWin is attracting a lot of new customers, unlike SimpliFi and the Mac version. I have no data to back that up, but I'd bet it's true and the UI might be a big part of that.

Jim_Harman

This article in Forbes from Jan '20 (sorry paywall but you get 4 reads free)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/donnafuscaldo/2020/01/14/quicken-bets-consumers-will-pay-for-its-new-personal-finance-app-simplifi/?sh=10a56fd9530f

quotes Eric Dunn as saying Quicken had 2.5 million "active customers" at that time, which I suppose includes people who were still using pre-subscription versions, and subscriptions grew 40% in the previous year. 

Remember QWin, QMac, and Simplifi are not competitors. Simplifi seems like a reasonable approach for drawing in new, younger customers who don't need all the features of Quicken.

Zoolook

The latest CEO newsletter seemed to imply there's no plan to improve Quicken for Windows' UI