After all the exceedingly positive...oh wait, it was incredibly negative...response to my podcast discussion with Aaron Patzer, head of Intuit's Quicken team, you think I'd run away from anything having to do with Quicken Essentials. But no, here I am again with a First Look at Quicken Essentials for Mac; I guess I'm a glutton for punishment or something.

When I chatted with Patzer about Essentials, the product wasn't out yet and I hadn't seen it in person, so we spent a few minutes discussing the features of the new program.

business software maker intuit said thursday that it's released a version of its quicken essentials financial management product for apple's macintosh computers. "quicken essentials for mac (qem) is the first quicken product to take full advantage

a year ago at the intuit booth at macworld, quicken founder scott cook pressed a cd into my hand. it contained a beta version of the company's long-overdue update of the mac version of quicken, called quicken financial life. eagerly awaiting

The defeat of Microsoft Money at the hands of Intuit's Quicken marks a rare chapter in the annals of software history.

Intuit is one of the few companies to take Microsoft head-on on its home turf--packaged software--and come out on top. Even more notably, Intuit has managed to do it several times, with Quicken of course, but also with QuickBooks and TurboTax.

Money management apps aren't new to the iPhone. But there's a big dog checking out the yard -- and this dog isn't new to the world of personal finance: Quicken. (Intuit makes Quicken, Turbo Tax and QuickBooks.)