WordPad got into the shadow of MS Office and Notepad anyways.

  • Scrubbles
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    4110 months ago

    This development aligns with Microsoft’s ongoing initiative to streamline its software offerings and concentrate on more sophisticated applications.

    Gross corpospeak. Translated as “We never invested in this because we want you to buy the paid version. Now that the paid version has completely eclipsed the free version we will be deprecating it”

    • @jarfil@beehaw.org
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      710 months ago

      Alternatively: “Not enough people cared to use this stuff, so we’ll shift our efforts towards stuff that our users care more about”.

      Agreed on the corpospeak, though.

      • @off_brand_@beehaw.org
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        810 months ago

        They were never giving it away. They included wordpad with your purchase of windows. They no longer do. I don’t think anyone is saying that windows is not “within their rights”, they’re saying that this degrades the product we already pay for. That is worth complaining about, even if our ultimate recourse primarily ends up being to find an OS that better serves our needs.

        Honestly though I’m struggling to understand why you’d think that’s about Microsoft’s rights to begin with??

        • @JCPhoenix@beehaw.org
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          710 months ago

          But if it’s not being developed (that’s my assumption as I haven’t touched WordPad in many, many years) and not many people are using it (again, I’m assuming based on my own personal experiences and those in the workplace), what’s wrong with removing a legacy system?

          People complain all the time about Microsoft retaining legacy systems, often seemingly detrimentally, so here it is, an opportunity to remove a legacy system, but now it’s bad?

          I get that not everyone has Word. But Word isn’t as paywalled as it once was. There’s the web version of Word, that’s free to use with a free Microsoft account. There’s Google Docs, also free with a gmail account. And there’s of course OpenOffice and LibreOffice, obviously free. So users have options for word processing that are better than WordPad.

        • @GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network
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          310 months ago

          The specific complaint was “gross corpospeak”. Let’s go ahead and use your explanation of the situation instead of mine, as it is indeed more accurate: how would you disseminate this change to your customers in a way that’s not “gross corpospeak”?

          • @off_brand_@beehaw.org
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            410 months ago

            I can’t speak for the original commented, but I’m personally quite tired of the thin veneer that’s slapped into these statements. I would prefer a company just be honest and talk about the profit incentives. They want people using the free version to please pay for the expensive one.

            For my experience, I still retain the general irritation at product quality going down regardless of how they word it. But now I’m also annoyed that MS isn’t being straightforward about it.

      • @t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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        310 months ago

        I mean, I think they literally provided the preferred, truthful version of the statement?

        “We never invested in this because we want you to buy the paid version. Now that the paid version has completely eclipsed the free version we will be deprecating it”