What the Hell Happened To Mint? (fastcompany.com) 89
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: Intuit's Mint personal-finance service wants me to know it's sorry. Again. "We're sorry!" its investments page bleats when I try to view my mutual funds' performance. "Our graphs require the latest version of Adobe Flash player." That site has spent years apologizing to me for needing Adobe's vulnerability-riddled plug-in: since I long ago booted Flash from my browser, since Adobe said in 2017 that it would drop Flash by the end of 2020, since Intuit told me in 2018 that Mint would wean itself from Flash "in the coming months."
But that's in keeping with this fossilized financial tool. Mint still provides a valuable service for free in aggregating transaction data from multiple financial institutions to clarify where your money comes and goes -- and in the bargain suggests hopefully-better financial products from advertisers -- but this app exhibits severe symptoms of neglect. It's as if Mint, with 13 million-plus registered users, were a resource-constrained startup instead of a property of Intuit, the Microsoft of personal finance. But more than a decade after the firm behind TurboTax and QuickBooks (and, until 2016, Quicken) bought Mint for $170 million, neatly taking a competitor off the map, this once-groundbreaking app might as well be streaked with cobwebs. The report goes on to note the "updates" category of Mint's blog "reveals no new features since April 2019's revised financial-advice interfaces in the mobile apps it introduced soon after the acquisition."
"It could be doing much more," says Aaron Patzer, founder of Mint. He points in particular to the lack of integration between Mint and TurboTax, saying, "I had a dream that TurboTax would take you about five minutes."
Another explanation for why the personal-finance service has gone neglected is the success of TurboTax, which generates roughly 10 to 20 times the revenue of Mint. Fast Company also notes that Mint "benefits from a lack of serious competition," as Quicken requires an annual subscription and remains desktop-bound, and the free Personal Capital web app is more geared toward investment management.
But that's in keeping with this fossilized financial tool. Mint still provides a valuable service for free in aggregating transaction data from multiple financial institutions to clarify where your money comes and goes -- and in the bargain suggests hopefully-better financial products from advertisers -- but this app exhibits severe symptoms of neglect. It's as if Mint, with 13 million-plus registered users, were a resource-constrained startup instead of a property of Intuit, the Microsoft of personal finance. But more than a decade after the firm behind TurboTax and QuickBooks (and, until 2016, Quicken) bought Mint for $170 million, neatly taking a competitor off the map, this once-groundbreaking app might as well be streaked with cobwebs. The report goes on to note the "updates" category of Mint's blog "reveals no new features since April 2019's revised financial-advice interfaces in the mobile apps it introduced soon after the acquisition."
"It could be doing much more," says Aaron Patzer, founder of Mint. He points in particular to the lack of integration between Mint and TurboTax, saying, "I had a dream that TurboTax would take you about five minutes."
Another explanation for why the personal-finance service has gone neglected is the success of TurboTax, which generates roughly 10 to 20 times the revenue of Mint. Fast Company also notes that Mint "benefits from a lack of serious competition," as Quicken requires an annual subscription and remains desktop-bound, and the free Personal Capital web app is more geared toward investment management.
What the hell happened to slashdot? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What the hell happened to slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well quite. For a second, the headline caught my attention because I thought it was about Linux Mint. Then a second later, I realized it was about some stupid Intuit software nobody gives a rat's ass about.
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I thought it was the wireless provider with that cute fox mascot. Figured this was another story about another MVNO biting the dust, since that seems to happen to all of the ones that aren't either wholly owned subsidiaries of the big 4, or one of Carlos Slim's brands.
I thought it was good commentary on tech debt (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it the most compelling Slashdot story ever? No. But it was a topic that is near and dear to our profession. It's a meat-and-potatoes story, not a five-star-Michlin banquet, but still worth eating. At least in my opinion.
Re:Cursing in the headline? (Score:5, Funny)
"Hell" is not swearing to anyone under the age of 130.
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All together now...
1... 2... 3...
*eyeroll*
Re: I thought it was good commentary on tech debt (Score:2)
I agree. Off there were an all-hands meeting of everyone on board, this would have been an item on the agenda (What are the plans for Mint?) What happens next will indicate the company's direction e.g. That's all the time we have,etc." or "About time for the donuts. Yay" or "We will set up a meeting just for that discussion")
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Well to that idiot, here's another flash, use a virtual PC, install flash there and one or twice a year when you actually use Mint you can spin it up and then shut it down again.
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There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third assumes a null hypothesis with a p value of .05
Flash EOL in December of this year (Score:2)
First, Flash Player is proprietary software. Second, both Adobe and all major browser publishers announced two years ago [slashdot.org] a plan to withdraw availability of Flash Player and browsers that run Flash Player about eleven months from now.
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Re:What the hell happened to slashdot? (Score:5, Interesting)
Intuit's a massive, massive company that's been printing money for about 20 years now. Mint has a huge install base.
That said, it's mildly amusing that they haven't ported their main app off of flash. Probably because the guy who wrote it is long, long gone and it's been on life support since before the buyout, and building a HTML 5.0 product would be a total rewrite and involve hiring some hens teeth programmers who actually understood the industry, as well as a subject matter expert on mutual fund investments to run the program and see it to completion. Probably looking at a 2 year, 3-5 million dollar project, just to keep feature parity for a larger product that's free to use and plays second fiddle to Turbo Tax and Quicken. Good luck with that.
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To be fair, nobody targets "HTML 5.0" anymore. Every serious web project is made out of tons of Javascript, and most of that relies on a ton of Google's latest, shiny proprietary hacks that web developers lap up like starved dogs. Almost nothing works unless it's run on one of the "big two" or "big three" browsers. Following standards isn't fashionable anymore.
More likely, they HAVE been working on a replacement, but it's such a clusterfuck they can't get it working correctly.
Not even slightly obscure (Score:4, Informative)
Mint is/was an extremely popular platform that most people who liked phone apps at least knew of, if not used. I thought it more than belonged here, as it's very much an interesting tech story (especially with that flash angle).
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Re: What the hell happened to slashdot? (Score:2)
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You can say that for nearly every development methodology.
Python, Ruby, NodeJs... the modern interpreted language of this time. Requires and updated interpreter. If say in 30 years it’s popularity drops significantly there won’t be a support base to keep the interrupter working on new hardware.
Cloud services are worse as the company can just turn off your services after a bankruptcy.
Language like C while better are not fool proof. Having a new type of hardware or new UI standards can quickly m
well the newsworthy thing is buying.. (Score:2)
well the newsworthy thing is buying competition out to keep a monopoly on the tax stuff I guess?
Seems like a massive opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
If you could just clone Mint, and add some fresh elements (ha!) it seems like you could sweep the user base virtually overnight.
It would probably take a small to medium size company to pull it off, but the reward would be massive, and you could partially fund the company by shorting Intuit before you launched. Now there's a "bet the company" move!
P.S. on a side note, Mint EVER needed Flash??? Oh my.
Re: Seems like a massive opportunity (Score:3)
Several years ago, I used yodlee which also disappeared. Considering how valuable data is now days and the existence of things like Ebates, Honey, and Wikibuy which mine your data, I am surprised that there are not more account aggregators out there. Personal Capital definitely figured it out and to my knowledge they do not even sell your data to third parties. They just use it for lead generation. Once your combined account balances go over a certain amount, they are pretty aggressive in calling and tr
Yes there are risks, but massive reward (Score:3)
It's all yours then because no one sane wants it. Support is hell in the consumer software market whether old school desktop based or new fangled cloud based.
Is it really, because most modern services seem to provide zero human support. You outsource that and set up some descent scripts for common scenarios, you're already ahead of most companies.
Especially when your customer is truly the average Joe who expects free as in beer, and even if he gets free as in beer, will crucify you in social media if you d
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I doubt that a new site like Mint would ever work unless they come up with a standardized way for the various financial institutions to share purchase and account balance information with each other. Mint's method of using saved bank account logon information to screen scrape information from the bank web sites was never reliable, and often caused itself to get locked out of your bank accounts when they changed the site or randomly challenged the logon with a security question or 2FA request.
Even when it di
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Most sites never needed flash or silverlight.
HTML4 CS2 and JS is enough for most attractive and functional web based business apps.
Ok if you want a client side renders graphs you may want html5 but there were ways around that.
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The weird thing is it only uses Flash to display some pretty basic graphs. It's something that could be replaced in a couple days with a js library and look much better.
It really went downhill once Intuit bought it - if there were some other competitor that did something similar, I'd switch in no time
Re:Seems like a massive opportunity (Score:4, Informative)
It's not an exact replacement, as it's more for people who want to actually manage a budget and adjust their spending proactively rather than just monitor where their money went, but what you're looking for is YNAB (You Need A Budget). https://www.youneedabudget.com... [youneedabudget.com]
On top of providing budgeting and transaction import (automatic or manual), there's actual human-based support included in the subscription.
I've been using the previous version of the software (pre-subscription, but lacking some newer features such as automatic import) for over five years, and it's been a game-changer for effectively managing my money.
Same thing happened to Quicken (Score:5, Informative)
The same thing happened to Quicken. It's still the same old craggy core code from 1983 with a UI from 1995 grafted on top of that. Since then it's been image asset changes and a few iterations of an online protocol.
What the hell is Mint? (Score:1)
Here I was thinking this was about Linux Mint and I get hit with some bullshit about Intuit, the most bullshit company of all-time? What is this, news for financiers?
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Yeah, I got confused! :(
Because Intuit (Score:2, Informative)
Intuit is a crappy company with atrocious programmers that continue to make crappy software that you now have to rent for life. They regularly add useless features while simultaneously blowing off adding really necessary features and charging a lot of money in the process.
Oh, and Intuit, if you are listening and I hope you are, you to this day have never owned up to the fact that an update to Quicken for Mac once completely borked my entire hard drive thus requiring me to pay FedEx to overnight my backup d
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Maybe 10 years ago. IIRC, the installer found a way to delete the Desktop folder.
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Re: Because Intuit (Score:2)
Re: Because Intuit (Score:2)
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Mac OS X/macOS gives applications no direct access at all
Unless the installer asked the user to elevate to the superuser in order to write software license activation metadata to reserved parts of the global partition table and file system.
Enterprise software sucks (Score:2)
The problem is enterprise software development model.
Which follows the following principles.
1. Do not change the UI users hate change.
2. Build a modular engine but never add it it because it could break old modules.
3. Port to new platforms don’t redesign.
4. 90% of the system should be based around making sure you are following the licensed terms of use.
Getting Enterprise software configured is of more expensive and time consuming then getting it designed and programmed custom to you business. Plus you
Here are all my base (Score:2)
How is plugging all of your financial data into one location a good idea, you better get some massive benefits, oh they tell you your net worth and some financial metrics? Seems like an idiotic trade. Please explain why anyone uses this...
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Re: Here are all my base (Score:2)
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Because it makes it easy to do budgeting and see how money is used across multiple accounts. Now I'm guessing you keep your cash under your mattress and never use credit cards, but for those of us in the 21st century, it's helpful to see all that data without needing to manually import it from each site.
And guess what? Big financial institutions already have all this data, it's less valuable to them than you think.
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How is plugging all of your financial data into one location a good idea, you better get some massive benefits, oh they tell you your net worth and some financial metrics? Seems like an idiotic trade. Please explain why anyone uses this...
Because for me, it makes it far easier to keep track of multiple bank accounts, assets, loans, brokerage accounts, 401(k) accounts. It keeps everything updated (mostly) and current, so I can see at a glance how screwed I am. I have been using Quicken for 25 years, and even though it's not great - I still find it immensely useful to keep track of my finances.
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This story is not about Linux.
Nobody with assets or a brain... (Score:1)
What happened? (Score:2)
Trust is the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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They have an advanced integration that needs to be rolled out by the banks.which is why adoption has been really slow.
But it has you login and authorize what accounts it has access to at the bank and it then gets and API key or something similar so it can still work with 2FA.
Similar with fitbit (Score:2)
I can share my data with an external user but they need flash to view it.
API? (Score:5, Interesting)
We really need a standard API for financial institutions so that we can pull our own financial data from them in a standard way. The way it is right now is a hodgepodge of various ways you can export the data from various bank websites via CSV if you're lucky but more often than not you can only ever simply copy and paste the data from the bank's website.
I'd much prefer some open source project running simple HTTPS requests against an open specification authorized via OAuth2. That way the data is on my device with no middle man.
Between my regular stock brokerage account, my old job's 401k, my new job's 401k, my current bank, and my credit card account it's really annoying to see a top down view of my finances at a glance.
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Situation: there are 14 competing standards.
Action: We should create an open source project running simple HTTPS requests against an open specification authorized via OAuth2!
Situation: there are 15 competing standards.
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Nailed it.
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When you go on investment websites (like https://www.bogleheads.org/for... [bogleheads.org] ), there are two sets of people.
People that use Mint and people that don't.
The ones that do, love it. It is their gateway to understand and track their finances.
The ones that don't believe that it's a security nightmare. The fact that you have to give them your username/password combination for every financial institution you deal with is terrifying.
While I agree that having a standard API to get info from financial institutions, h
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Two username/passwords. One for complete access. The second for read-only. Maybe make the read-only username (not password) randomly generated and anonymous so that others can't figure out who you are or your use that info to try to log onto your main account.
First of all, this provides you 0 additional security, but some banks offer this. The attack any decent hacker will do is setup a paypal account with your account. Using Mint, they can verify they own the account by watching the penny counts that are deposited. Now they have paypal linked to your bank account and can hover up every dollar you have, without ever logging into your bank website or having write access to your bank website.
There are two sets of people... and people that don't [use mint].
Long ago, I wrote a app that was designed to take in financial infor
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The cost for intuit to seriously fix mint is likely higher than the cost of buying up any startup that competes with mint, given how the barrier to entry is integrating with hundreds of banks.
1. Feign a start-up that competes with Mint
2. get bought by Intuit
3. . .
4. Profit
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We really need a standard API for financial institutions
You mean like OFX (Open Financial Exchange) [ofx.net]? OFX 1.x has stalled for 10 years, but in 2017 it looked like OFX 2.x was regaining initiative.
OAuth2 client secrets in free software (Score:2)
I'd much prefer some open source project running simple HTTPS requests against an open specification authorized via OAuth2.
Except OAuth2 has practical problems for distributing a client as free software [slashdot.org]. How would a free software project obtain a client key and client secret from each bank in each country? Distributing the key pairs in a configuration file included in the source repository is a no-no, as the banks would revoke the key pairs "to protect users from fraud." Would each user have to register as a developer with each bank at which the user has an account in order to obtain an OAuth2 key pair used to run only that cop
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The OAuth2 key and secret would be granted against your account instead of the software.
My bad (Score:1)
I ate it.
Easy answer (Score:1)
It became a pretty usable Linux Distribution. What's your point?
Moral of the story? (Score:2)
It's not quite clear what the moral of this story is. I take it to be: Flash still isn't dead. To which I can attest: Adobe apparently still maintains Adobe Connect - at least, I have recently been asked to attend a teleconference by using this piece of software. And it also is still based on Flash.
What do we have to do to finally, permanently get rid of Flash? Drive a stake through its heart?
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developer boredom and corporate greed (Score:2)
Never heard of it - We all have written software that does a job and then moved on to fresh pastures .
I guess thats part of it but clearly the corporate overlords who once thought it was the next best thing moved on and where hoping to sell it computet associates whom seem to have once bought all software that became uncool - wordperfect etc. I dont hear much about ca anymore not that i intentionally want it.
I once used a stock tracking website years ago which worked until it was bought by somebody else
I mean, it's intuit, so... (Score:3)
Not sure what anyone was expecting. It's not as if "software quality" has ever concerned intuit. They do just enough to retain customers, which I guess makes sense from a business angle, but it means their software is absolutely garbage ( I support a quickbooks installation, for my sins ).
Even in it's prime, however, Mint wasn't anything other than a data aggregate service. For those seriously interested in taking control of their finances, you need more; a true budgeting system which not only tracked where your case goes, but also where it WILL go. A digital version of the envelope system is what is needed.
Ed Snowden (Score:3)
I used Mint before Ed let me know that it's owner is a "cooperating entity".
It's almost like the site hasn't been updated since all the high-value targets fled. Maybe it's not just an obsolete surveillance tool, but that would require a better theory.
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From what I can see Mint is just a tax tool. As such all it does is gather data from other existing co-operating entities, so it seems a bit non-sensical to complain about this specific issue.
Nice Stealthy Slashvertisement (Score:1)
This is one of the more clever slashvertisements I've seen...
Using Mint (Score:1)
Citibank sucks like this too! (Score:2)
Citibank, with trillions of dollars, is still using Flash for its Virtual Creditcard Number tool. Seriously broken. Both the web based tool and the downloadable app for the desktop requires the use of Adobe Flash.
It is shameful they are not maintaining their web site for latest open standards and security.
Comment (Score:1)
Dunno, but they're on systemd, so I stopped caring.