On
Monday morning, the internet was abuzz with sad news: ‘RIP ~ Paint’ – most
media wrote – nothing to do with ‘liquid,
liquefiable, or mastic composition that, after application to a substrate in a
thin layer, converts to a solid film’. This is about the Paint that every Windows
user tried their hand in using and drawing something of their choice !!
The news was - Microsoft, has
announced killing off Paint, the seminal
drawing program that has been around since the first release of Windows in
1985. As Obituary was written, readers started writing about their memories of
their experiences and one user marked the program’s
purported passing with a gravestone seemingly drawn—where else?—in Paint
itself.
Microsoft Windows, MS Windows or simply Windows, is a metafamily
of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It
consists of several families of operating systems, each of which cater to a
certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with
IBM PC compatible architecture. Microsoft
introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985, as a
graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest
in graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
Upon introduction in those
days, Windows totally dominated the
world's personal computer (PC) market with over 90% market share, overtaking
Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. For most PC users, Windows is still
the most popular operating system. However, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing
the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the
massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows
devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold. This comparison
however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally
target different platforms. At this juncture, the most recent version of
Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones and embedded devices is Windows 10.
Paint (formerly
Paintbrush), commonly known as Microsoft Paint or MS Paint, is a simple
computer graphics app that has been included with all versions of Microsoft
Windows. The app mainly opens and saves files as Windows bitmap (24-bit, 256
color, 16 color, and monochrome, all with the .bmp extension), JPEG, GIF
(without animation or transparency. The
app can be in color mode or two-color black-and-white, but there is no
grayscale mode. For its simplicity, it rapidly became one of the most used
applications in the early versions of Windows—introducing many to painting on a
computer for the first time—and is still widely used for very simple image
manipulation tasks.
This Monday,
(24.7.2017), Microsoft added Paint to the list of Windows features to be
deprecated in the Windows 10 Fall Creator's Update.
From its introduction
Paint came a long way - Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows Me versions of
Paint can save images in JPEG, GIF and PNG formats if the necessary Microsoft
graphics filters are installed, usually by another Microsoft application such
as Microsoft Office or Microsoft PhotoDraw. The most popular application that
has come pre-installed on Windows since it was launched in 1985 was about to
die or so it was announced. It was a firm staple for children in IT lessons
around the world in the 1980s and 1990s. The software was targeted to be one of several features removed in the
Windows 10 Creators Update this autumn.
Last year, Microsoft
introduced a new version called Paint 3D, which included support for 3D
objects. Instead of replacing Paint with Paint 3D, Microsoft added a link to
Paint 3D in the Home tab of Paint's ribbon. Microsoft announced the list of
features that will be killed off in a blog on its website. The firm wrote:
'This list is intended to help customers consider these removals and
deprecations for their own planning. 'The list is subject to change and may not
include every deprecated feature or functionality.' Other features set to be
killed off include the Reader app, Screen saver function and Outlook
Express.
The news went viral with
every media fast writing an obituary to MS Paint ~
the good news came before I could write and post one ! Fans on social media decried the potential
death of Paint, which has been in existence for 32 years. That made Microsoft release a blog post stating - "Today, we've seen an
incredible outpouring of support and nostalgia around MS Paint. If there's
anything we learned, it's that after 32 years, MS Paint has a lot of fans. It's
been amazing to see so much love for our trusty old app," Megan Saunders,
a general manager at Microsoft, wrote in that blog post.
"Amidst today's commentary around MS Paint we wanted to take this
opportunity to set the record straight, clear up some confusion and share some
good news: MS Paint is here to stay, it will just have a new home soon, in the
Windows Store where it will be available for free."
So, thanks for all the MS
Paint love, keep the feedback coming via the Paint 3D app, and keep creating!
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
25th July 2017
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