MIND BLOWN: what if Intuit was RIGHT?
20+ year I.T. support vet here, formerly in love with QuickBooks. I formerly found the Desktop product to be solid enough, for many years, and, although Intuit tech support was quite lacking, I.T. departments did still have some control. Fast forward to now: regular, exorbitant, borderline extortion-level price increases. Sunsetting of the desktop product. Forcing Desktop updates on all users, far too quickly than before.
What if Intuit did this on PURPOSE, because they KNEW that the writing was on the wall? They had a desktop product that was probably widely pirated that they were making $0 on, and they knew, or reasonably believed, that AI and other entrepreneurial startups were gunning for them. So they decided to fleece the last customers who are on desktop, and force everyone else to their cloud, hence eliminating pirating and “ten x-xing” profits. If the AI apocalypse never comes, they just make a whole bunch of that sweet, sweet monthly recurring revenue. And if it does, well at least they got to buy some more boats in the meantime. Thoughts?