Every change Microsoft plans to make to its operating systems is watched closely, and there are plenty of reasons for such paranoia, because once the Redmond giant takes out the scalpel, it doesn't put it away until it has drawn blood. The new Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is approaching, and among its list of features to modify appears the classic Paint. Microsoft declared mspaint.exe "obsolete", which means it will no longer be part of the system, but the company confirmed it will remain available through the official store.
The story of Microsoft Paint began in November 1985 with the launch of Windows 1.0, but many of us knew it better as "Paintbrush" in Windows 3.x. Everything Paint lacks in precision it gains in simplicity, and that may have been its strong point in recent decades. Personally, I have even finished images with Paint, courtesy of a crashed main editor and other unexpected errors ten minutes before handing in a project. Its last major update came with Windows 7 when it received Ribbon support, and its only relevant change in Windows 10 is a shortcut to its sister app Paint 3D. In other words, Microsoft has pretty much abandoned Paint.
So it shouldn't surprise us much that under the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft decided to declare mspaint.exe "obsolete" ("deprecated"). What does that mean exactly? To tell the truth, even Redmond doesn't know. A good portion of the Win32 API is also obsolete and has remained in that state for the last fifteen or twenty years, but it still forms part of operating systems. Facing the possibility of its final disappearance, the Web responded with all kinds of images, asking Microsoft to "save" Paint. On many occasions those complaints go nowhere, but today we found the exception: Through a brief statement, Microsoft confirmed that classic Paint will live on as one more app in the store.
Logically, the company reminds us that Paint's current position will be taken over by the aforementioned Paint 3D… which I deleted 45 seconds later after finishing the latest Windows 10 install. Instead, Paint remains there, waiting to come to the rescue the next time Paint.net has an existential crisis.
