MS Paint is here to stay
blogs.windows.com
blogs.windows.com
These are both "desktop bridge" applications and not UWP apps so perhaps that is the difference. They were both free.
I was preparing to sign in after clicking "Get" but ... it just worked.
And I am pretty sure for Windows RT they just compiled mspaint.exe for ARM.
Wow that's... What?
For all its warts, the Windows Store is a secure app delivery platform. Doesn't disabling it merely encourage downloading zipped executables from sleazy unencrypted websites?
Similarly, though admittedly not a problem in the same way with Windows store apps, to Chrome extensions. Those working in secretive environments with naive users shouldn't have something like "Youtube auto-hd" installed, which will feedback every single website they visit to some shady third party analytics company. IMO this is why having even the concept of these apps inside a "secure" (re. enterprise) version of Windows is a massive oversight. I will admit that this is not a problem in the LTSB branch of Windows 10 Enterprise; I had the disabled apps magically re-enable themselves 3 times after "updates" on non-LTSB before switching back over.
Sorry to rant, but in summation, don't be shocked when corporate users want their laptops to be as restricted and purely for work as possible.
One issue is that some classes of users and locations (e.g. Trading floors) are restricted by law concerning the communications systems they can use for work because all communications regarding financial transactions has to be auditable.
On the other hand most of the banks have their own internal software libraries you can install stuff from and you get a bunch of useful utilities by default such as Irfanview, notepad++, Greenshot or similar. Machines for devs are often less locked down.
Hence the popularity of portable apps which don't use installers. The just unzip to any folder and run.
Once a portable app shows up in the reports you are simply fired by blatant disregard for the rules and procedures you agreed to when signing your contract.
Finance is a heavily regulated environment and you can't get away with things that would be excusable in other places.
In brief, if any of the said applications require Registry entry, it denies that through the permission model that these systems have installed.
If it requires altering some files under some directory, it denies that as well.
Some corporations even restrict such shady websites altogether using an exhaustive list of restricted domains and subdomains, often maintained by a third party, who do this list maintenance full-time for corporates like IBM, TCS, just to name a few.
On top of it, almost all network and device activities are tracked, flash drive ports disabled, etc. to ensure "security".
(Only a handful of underpaid device managers have access to Admin account. Forget the fact that this still doesn't prevent them from doing so at their discretion, or credentials sharing)
Perhaps we should all go back to mainframes and green-screen dumb terminals?
That's why "the shock".
I understand the security issues - they are absolutely valid in today's world.
But the whole reason the PC came about, was because it moved the computing resources from some sacrosanct computing "temple" (complete with acolytes who kept the system running, secure, and managed) to the general office, and allowed the users to customize and control their software and data to allow for a more "agile" flow.
Computer-based spreadsheets, for instance, weren't anything new when VisiCalc appeared on the scene in 1979 (and later on the PC in 1981) - what was new was having such a powerful piece of software available on a machine that was cheap and independent of the "computer room". Users and managers now had direct control of their data and processes, and ultimately this set the stage toward today's reality.
Gone were having to wait (and wait, and wait) for approval to get a particular application installed; gone were having to wait for the budget approval, hardware upgrades or acquisitions, etc - tons of effort, time, planning, etc needed just to get a simple app (if such was even allowed by the mainframe service contract! Maybe that needed renegotiation as well!).
Just go down to ComputerLand, buy a PC and a copy of VisiCalc (or whatever), plop it on a desk, and work. Freedom!
Ever since then, though, there has been this security of the system and data (physical security, data security, backups, viruses, worms, trojans, etc) that has been problematic. Various solutions have been tried, none have been 100% effective. Problems still exist, data gets wiped or lost, employees move on, leaving password-enabled zip files behind nobody knows how to access, data leaves the building, laptops are stolen, viruses and malware abound, cryptolocking happens, and on and on and on...
But people still want their freedom. They want to just download and run a piece of software to make their life and work flow better. They don't want to wait for approval and budgets.
How do you solve this dilemma?
Going back to a locked down system isn't the answer; as tempting as it may seem, it merely moves the problem up the stack, while increasing frustration for the actual users of the systems.
Hence my snarky response - because that was (in a way) considered "ultimate security" - a centralized system, with no smarts at the end nodes. Tightly controlled, regulated, monitored, updated, and secured. Many major companies (most of them gone today) built fortunes on that model. That such few of these companies remain tells you something about how that model faired. Trying to return to it might not be the best thing to do.
What the answer to the problem should be, though, I can't say unfortunately...
In a corporate environment in many cases it is undesired that users install applications. So of course one disables Windows Store. Additionally one prohibits downloading zips etc. I have read of a way how in Windows one can set that files created/downloaded by users cannot be executed, which is also a desired configuration in many corporate environments.
That is a pretty effective way to prevent unwanted software to be installed / run.
For some value of $secure, yes. It's has package integrity checks, sure, but there's plenty of PUPs, adware and spyware in apps that for some corporate networks are considered a no-no.
Seriously whoever designed their "modern" UI needs to get booted. It's terrible and the main reason nobody uses the windows app store.
Ubuntu, MacOS, and even Steam on Windows all have a good app store interface. MS designed the OS and their version is a UI nightmare.
I'm hoping in some way there's some MS employees watching this thread. Please fix the damn app store by just extending the functionality of "add/remove programs" which everyone knows how to use and works fine.
We also had a look at the enterprise store recently to publish our own apps too, but the reliance on azure cloud means that we'll be publishing through other means for the foreseeable future.
It's amazing to see how MS destroying it's own platform.
Since a lot of us are programmers we were effectively allowed to install anything else normal that we wanted, but for some reason metro applications were disabled.
Ha ha ...
Additionally it does not work properly without a Microsoft account (could've changed) forcing it to be off if Active Domain is used.
Furthermore, the Windows Store for Business uses Active Domain accounts entirely and allows you to connect Windows Store licenses to corporate licensing policies, if you want to control corporate application requisitions centrally but still give users some individual control in Store installed apps. (Not to mention carrying private internal apps for an enterprise.) WSB has been around in various capacities since Windows 8.1 as well, but also fully came into its own very early in Windows 10.
As for application vetting and "apps people need", that's entirely a subjective judgment, but there is an application vetting process in place which is more than you can say about the traditional google for an MSI/EXE and hope its correct install process.
Yes it is. Paint has been a bundled app for decades and they have decided not to include it any more. "Available for free" is different than "comes included". Also, this whole thing looks like a big advertisement for their new Paint3D or whatever it is. They promote it in the blog and point out that it has a lot of features Paint has, and oh by the way it's free in the store too just like Paint.
You're trying very hard to be a victim here. It isn't optimal that it is removed from the stock OS, but its still there.
Nope. I run Linux or OSX at home so I don't really care one way or the other. But I do see it as pushing some kind of agenda on MS part since it is a change and it did promote another program as an alternative. I see clearly in this case.
It's just a mspaint with an updated layout and more features. Y'all are arguing about msoffice 2007 vs 2010.
I never downloaded it, is just bundled like every other utility into insider versions of windows10, its certainly superior to paint.
Almost a bit worrying how fearful of change some hn people are.
Try removing CandyCrushSaga and Facebook, and XBoxIdentityProvider(among many others)...they come right back after the next round of updates.
If you're going allow Windows Store with all of its junk(that you have very little control over), might as well allow Bonzai Buddy, Ask Toolbar, and Super PC Cleaner 2017 Premium Edition Recommended Microsoft!
And the argument that Windows Store apps are more secure so even if a ad or application is malicious the damage is limited doesn't hold water. A quick google will bring up tons of examples of code escaping sandboxes, even entire virtual machines. Any environment, no matter how secure, will always benefit from a reduction in attack surface area.
Which would you rather users on your network do?
(This is just one of many paint-in-a-browser sites.)
It definitely does, however, feel like the end of a era.
Candy Crush, "Get Office", Minecraft, ... and all other trash that gets installed by default.
Later came the random console pop-up from the automatic WSL updates [1] and then I did panic enough to actually format all the things but that's another story.
The fact that Apple Watch has its own pre-installed app feels like an ad to me as well.
And don't get me started on App Store ads... https://twitter.com/nuthatch/status/879783700279418881
Pinball had to be removed for this sort of reason.
What? No. It was removed because it was a 32bit application written by a 3rd party and there was a hard to fix bug on 64bit windows that made it unplayable, so they dropped it.
Source: Raymond Chen - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=...
From Raymond Chen's answer to this question in the first comment to the same blog post:
> That would have been even more work, because there was at the time no infrastructure in Setup for having 32-bit-only components. (And then automatically uninstalling it when WOW64 was disabled.)
I don't have a Win10 mspaint.exe for comparison, but the one from XP is 336KB.
It's a damn shame that a lot of apps these days seem to be >1MB, yet are even more featureless.
If you want to talk about reducing size, there's plenty of other low-hanging fruit of more questionable utility in the OS.
Plus it does do some off the wall stuff, someone in this thread mentioned it can pull images from a scanner!?
Completely agreed. This is basically Microsoft officially confirming that yes, MSPaint will be gone from Windows. Seems kind of senseless.
And why on earth does the menu icon in Paint 3D look like a folder icon?
For Paint, I'm not sure that would be a big win, disk space-wise. mspaint.exe is around 6.5 MB on my system, but it may need additional files. However, they could do the same for Notepad (which probably isn't on the firing line yet because quite a few installers and updaters launch it by hard-coded path if users want to read release notes) and a few other tools and share the code for asking permission between those.
So MS Paint is to Windows what Vi is to Unix?
That is, no matter which editor you prefer, you'll always end up learning Vi, at least its basics. Because when in doubt, it may be the only viable editor that exists on your target system for sure.
Because I infrequently use windows, it makes the presence of notepad, paint, and calc even more important. They are the tools I reach for first to accomplish simple tasks on Windows. Happy to hear Paint is staying.
I was very upset when I realized there wasn't paint available (at leas the way I configured it).
I imagine that will be a common reaction, in which case Microsoft is adding one more to the channels of malware distribution.
Deleted comment
Resize? Tools » Adjust Size…
Add a circle or line? Command Shift A
Windows store is pretty simple, I'll just go there.
There are undoubtedly many highly intelligent, well-meaning people working there, but the ongoing occurrence of highly-publicized customer screwage - such as the aggressive telemetry in W10 - and the ongoing security negligence (e.g. in failing to properly audit & fully close SMB RCEs) seems to totally undermine any goodwill created by specific products or teams within the company.
As a result the press cuts them little to no slack, and they do get hammered for things that AAPL/GOOG/FB/... could probably quietly get away with.
What an inane reason, you may say.
But IMHO it was one of the best features ever introduced into desktop computing. Simple, easy to see colored backgrounds that you could assign to files to organize or tag them as you saw fit. (seen/not seen, reviewed/not reviewed, good/bad/meh, and so on)
Maybe Mac users are less vocal about the removal of features (or they are simply fewer) but this kind of blatant disregard for the needs and established workflows of your customers has a long term effect on a company's image.
It's a good example of how Apple's stubbornness can ruin software: some designers had a misguided idea about the cloud ("file systems are bad, people are too dumb for folders"), so they tried to build iCloud around isolated app silos. Then they realised that it gets messy once you have lots of files, and instead of admitting their mistake, they doubled down on not having folders and replaced colour labels by tags (which require more clicks than labels, and are much harder to see).
Of course, one version later they did give up on app-based silos, and introduced iCloud Drive. But what a stupid journey that was, and you can still see the scars in Apple's UI (app-based folders cluttering iCloud Drive, dedicated "tags" input field in every Save File dialog).
The reason a lot of people, including me, chose MS instead of Apple (or now, Google) is because of their reputation for backwards compatibility.
Really, if you dig deep enough you might find people decrying the demise of f'ing Clippy. Well maybe that's hyperbole, but you get my point.
Clippy was a good idea implemented poorly and ahead of its time. Cortana/Siri/Alexa/Google Assistant is the new the Clippy, RIP Clippy.
There should be a type of law like Poes Law to describe this behavior.
Also, everyone generally liked paint's simplicity, no we have stuff like candy crush default installed on Windows.
Sure, maybe not a huge deal for most people but I can see how some would be disappointed.
It was a strange phenomenon. Everyone railed against it in so many ways, then did a complete 180.
And, I couldn't figure out how to uninstall it! It wasn't uninstallable in the normal ways, and I don't think I ever figured out how to do so.
I won't miss Paint, and I never used it, but I definitely don't consider Paint 3D an upgrade or improvement. And, I really hate Microsoft's standard practice of replacing file associations even if I've already setup my own before one of their apps gets installed (I had a couple of other tools setup for images, and they got replaced in the defaults for like 30 file types). They do it with pretty much every app they distribute. It's presumptuous.
I haven't used Paint 3d before until a few moments ago, and very quickly worked out how to resize and crop an image. Seemed simple enough. The image resizing is actually better than most I've seen.
I should be clear: I don't know Windows. I've used it very rarely over the past couple of decades. I keep a Windows partition around for gaming and audio work (though even that no longer really requires Windows these days, as my favorite games are on Linux and even audio isn't awful under Linux anymore). So, if someone knows their way around Windows, my complaints might seem sort of stupid. Maybe it's trivial to fix all of the annoyances I had; but they were frustrating for me. For me, there was just mysterious stuff happening on my machine and I didn't know how to fix it and I didn't like it.
I don't know how many time I tried =really tried= to use the photo app or the new remote desktop app, but I always come back very frustrated to the classic version.
Does it mean that from now on we would have to download it?
No more screenshots on the hospital PC, then.
- A message telling me where the picture went.
- The picture showing up on the desktop.
- The picture showing up in "Documents".
- The picture showing up in "Pictures".
But, I was able to recover the screenshot by... opening Paint, and pasting from the clipboard! That's not a solution that will be available on a machine without Paint.
The UX could probably do with some improvement showing that the image is not automatically saved to disk, like scrot or OSX's Image Capture shortcuts, though.
Where is this menu?
I agree that it's really unclear what happens when you use Win+Shift+S to grab the screen. No indication at all that the image is on the clipboard.
There needs to be a Win+Ctrl/Alt+Shift+S that automatically saves to the Screenshots directory or something.
You will have Paint 3D and the first three buttons you see after opening the app are "New", "Open" and "Paste" (with a clipboard icon(!)).
EDIT: Maybe it doesn't help that in German Windows calls the clipboard the "Zwischenablage" (temporary storage) whereas the German word for "clipboard" would be "Klemmbrett" -- the German version actually seems to use a more abstract concept rather than the same direct metaphor as in English. Weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paste_up
I haven't been able to find evidence of this alternate meaning for "clipboard", though, as modern use has rendered it un-Googleable. The best I've been able to find is that its use in computing probably started somewhere between Xerox PARC and the Apple Lisa:
http://www.liquidinformation.org/onxeaplaprog.html
I find it fascinating, though, that this word has stuck, propagated essentially by word-of-mouth -- like the contents of the clipboard itself, the word is generally not shown in user interfaces. "Scrapbook", the name of the clipboard management utility in the original Macintosh OS, would have made a lot more sense semantically.
I believe the now known icons were popularised esp. through MS Office. What I found on the net is that Susan Kare did the more obvious scissor cut-icon for the Mac earlier. Would be interesting to read where those icons originated.
I don't fault them for this in the least because they did what they knew how to do to accomplish the task and the task was accomplished effectively, I was able to see their screen.
1) Printscreen 2) control + v on paint 3) control + s and type in image name
Also, GPOs can (and do) disable the Windows Store. So moving MSPaint to the Windows Store does not make as available as having it pre-installed.
Still, there are times when you have a weird error you need to screenshot, and you know that if you move the mouse or hit anything other than the print screen button, it will go away.
Paint made this scenario very easy to deal with.
The paranoid in me is expecting there to be a catch to this new paint application. Ads? DLC?
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\CALC.EXE
(Default) C:\<PATH-TO-WINDOWS7-CALC>\calc.exe
Path C:\<PATH-TO-WINDOWS7-CALC>
So wondering why it would work on your end. Do you have an old .net runtime on your machine perchance?
If you think you can trust me (you can!) - try this one:
In that case I'll stick with Microsoft Calculator Plus from 2005. Now if you need a binary of that... then I can post a link for you. :)
Actually here you go: http://www.vimalin.com/download/CalcPlus.zip
The installer in the zip is signed by Microsoft.
Found your version :p Just bumped into my calc archives and did a binary compare with a Windows XP archive I had of it and it matched. So turns out it is from Windows XP and yes that one works.
Turns out that if you create a shortcut via the send To "Desktop (Create shortcut)" that you can then set it up a keyboard shortcut via properties. As long as your shortcut is on the desktop or in the menu then the keyboard shortcut works. Yay.
You mean like the 20 UWP apps that I can't uninstall because they made everything intertwined on purpose? Don't bother trying to link some random PowerShell/GPO/registry hacks because I know about all of them. It always breaks something (varying from release to release)
> What more do you want from them?
No ads and invasive telemetry
You can certainly remove some of them manually or using 3rd party solutions but something eventually goes wrong specially after an update. I mean I can remove most of the executables from the Windows folder, my point is that it's going to break something eventually. Removing Cortana and SearchUI used to work before AU, now it just freezes my start menu completely.
And when I tried Paint3D in the past it was garbage. Someone in this thread said that it is actually easy to crop with it, and I tried again, and yes it is actually a bearable experience, but scaling the image gives a crappy quality, so it is a no-go.
Then I got the Win+Shift+S screen clipping tool, which is awesome, it only gets the clipped screenshot into the clipboard, which is a half-assed solution, but then I remembered I got evernote, and made Win+Shift+D save the clipboard into a new note.
This way I can instantly take a screenshot in an already cropped way, and save it for future use, and Evernote can easily Annotate the image with text, or arrows, which is sufficient.
Awesomeness!
"Dell is proud to announce their new line of laptops, with classic Paint built-in!
I doubt if Microsoft is removing Paint because of OS base image size. It should be more about source code maintenance and UI consistency. Both WordPad and Paint got ribbon user interface for Windows 7 and calc.exe has been replace by a modern Windows Store app in Windows 10.
Why should Microsoft spend time and resource to keep these applications up to date while majority of users are using better free alternatives?
On the contrary; I have Paint.net and GIMP installed, I've experimented with both of them, and I still don't have a tool as quick and easy for marking up a screenshot as Paint is. At that singular task it is superb.
I create a lot of training material, so marking up screenshots is a significant component of my job. This will make my job harder for no good reason.
Windows Snipping Tool is a very good tool for taking screen shots.
7Zip and VLC are good examples. The community accepted to download and use many community driven projects over Microsoft provided tools.
If you want to keep the original mspaint.exe and don't want to use the Store for some reason, you can literally just copy it from any Windows 10 install media prior to RS3. Or from a running system. It's not difficult.
Not GIMP or other complicated things, I want my 4-year-old son to use it.
For one thing, it provides workarounds for horrible stability and functionality issues with image printing out of the Windows Shell (Windows Explorer).
I think it provides the only way to print an image 1:1 (original scale) without installing third party software. I.e. 600 pixels of a 600 dpi image actually measure one inch. Not all images are photographs that can be scaled; sometimes they are patterns for some real-world object.
How would a Windows user, say, crop an image without MS Paint, using only a vanilla Windows install with no 3rd party anything?
We thought MS Paint was so great, we decided to list all the features that Paint 3D has that are similar to what MS Paint has. And we want to mention that Paint 3D is FREE!
These are the results for searching "MS Paint" on windows.com:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/result.aspx?q=MS+Pain...
We are taking paint away from you and allowing you to come and get it through our funnel, erm... store.
Anyway, I agree that MS Paint needs to be built-in to Windows. It's like Notepad for images. Something that's reliable that we know that works and how to use.
When was the last time you could get anything done with MS Paint?
MS Paint has been there for me through thick and thin.
Yeah, I'm not about to become a graphic artist with it, but what does that have to do with anything?
And what's more, I don't know what you're on about with Notepad. I've taken more notes in Notepad than any other program, no contest. "Toy"? Is a butterknife a toy because all it does is spread butter?
And, er, you draw diagrams in Paint? Where you cannot even edit a damn text-box? [^1] Really?
[^1]: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
I left MS office for open/libreoffice a few years ago and haven't looked back. The idea of having a store built into my operating system makes me ill, I already have enough of that with android. I can't really imagine giving MS any more money (except possibly when buying a laptop), and I'm not sure what they can do to change it.