Come on. You know you use it. I use it all the time. It's obviously not the most sophisticated graphic program by a long shot. It's dated and it's extremely limited in its capabilities.
But Microsoft Paint is line an old shoe (I wear those too, by the way), and while no one will ever mistake it for Photoshop, Microsoft found out this week that it had vastly underestimated the program's fan base before making the announcement that Paint was being put out to pasture.
Vastly underestimated it, that is:
After the tremendous outpouring of love across the internet for arguably the greatest Windows program ever, Microsoft has announced that it will save MS Paint by putting it on the Windows Store.
Following the company's announcement that the 32-year-old Paint is now deprecated, meaning that it is "not in active development and might be removed in future releases", Microsoft put out a blogpost in response to the anguished outcry at the potential removal of an old friend.
Megan Saunders, Microsoft's general manager of the 3D for Everyone initiative, said: "MS Paint is here to stay, it will just have a new home soon, in the WindowsStore where it will be available for free.
"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."
Saunders also took the opportunity to push Paint 3D, which came with the Windows 10 Creators Update, is also in the Windows Store and Microsoft hopes you will you use instead.
That's how markets are supposed to work
It is certainly not a new tactic for software developers to drag people kicking and screaming into using a new version of something by discontinuing the familiar old one, and thus leaving them with no choice. Often the new version is harder to use and a lot more complicated, sticking you with features you didn't want or need, and disabling old ones you used all the time.
Progress marches on, of course, and I can understand why Microsoft wants people to use 3D after what I'm sure is considerable development resources they've put into it.
But I think developers sometimes fail to appreciate the value of comfort and familiarity where products are concerned. Paint is an anachronism, but then so are Asteroids and Pac Man. It's part of what makes them cool. People who have been using the program for decades know all its quirks, and in many cases they've developed clever workarounds to help them get more out of it - or at least get what they want out of it.
I suppose, if you're a developer, that's part of the problem. You've put your heart and soul into development what you're sure is a vastly superior application, and yet people often don't want new and better. They want what they're comfortable with. So you bang your head on the desk.
This seems like a good compromise, though. Future updates of Windows will contain 3D as a default, but you can still get Paint from the Windows Store if you want it, for free. We're not talking about high-end graphic design here at any rate, but maybe what we are talking about is more important. This is a program that allowed ordinary people who will never do this professionally to nonetheless mess around with images, create memes or do whatever they wanted to do. It appears the user base for Paint was much broader than Microsoft imagined, which is why it backed off going the New Coke route and gave the public what it wanted.
That's how markets are supposed to work.
