A couple of days ago, the internet was seemingly enraged over the announcement that the next Windows 10 update would remove the legendary paint program from Windows.
Oh yes, people got pissed.
Then, the next day Microsoft decided to announce that paint isn’t going anywhere; at least, not in principle. Here’s what’s up:
Paint 3D is a Windows Store App that provides the same features that Microsoft Paint did, while also adding new ones. This was actually a part of the previous creators update, and as such many people (who update their machines, anyway) probably already have it installed, ready and waiting to be used.
Yes, this isn’t the same old mspaint.exe desktop application; Microsoft Paint as we know it is effectively being replaced, but at that same rate, is it at all the same paint we knew? The modern paint application isn’t the same as the one from the Windows 9X days, and Paint 3D is equally different, yet still clearly familiar enough, right? What’s in a name, and all that jazz.
The Windows 95 Start Menu.
Sorry, it’s not showing paint but I wanted to use an image to fill up space.
This being said, it does seem like Microsoft Paint will be available from the Windows Store as an optional download… So you can still use it if you want it – hell, odds are it won’t even be removed from current installs, and if it is, well, you will be able to get it back, right?
Now, I have to say, and this was going to be the focus of this article before Microsoft announced Paint wasn’t going anywhere (in spirit, anyway) was this: Why the obsession over Microsoft Paint?
I mean, I get it it – it’s familiar (at least when they don’t change it around like they did in the past decade), it’s good enough for many tasks, and it works. Sure, but it’s also primitive as fuck. Paint 3D is certainly more advanced than Paint, but for many purposes, people would be better suited using something like GIMP as a free option – its designed around image editing and creation more akin to what people seem to have used MSPaint for for the past few years, and is certainly much more capable in the long haul.
Hey, look, MSPaint is here! There it is. Yes, this is a space filler!
I’m not trying to bash Paint, but when it’s all said and done, it’s nostalgia that drives this reaction: Like I said, the modern Paint executable isn’t even the same one we knew back in the 90’s and early 2000’s – it got updated around the time of Windows Vista and more updated in Windows 7 and later, and while I haven’t touched it much since Windows XP I do know the program I fire up now isn’t the same one I remember back a decade ago, nor is it the same program that is was spawned as back in the earliest days of Windows.
Hell, people saying it’s been in Windows for 32 years isn’t entirely accurate as the original program that became paint sure wasn’t named that when it was first introduced, so to treat this change as any different is kind of silly.
Paint will live on. It’s just become yet another program to follow the trend in Windows evolving from one design ethos to another – Paint 3D is just the next stage in that.
As for me, I’ll continue to just fin it an oddity, something that’s nice to have but I never really use – unless of course I’m bored on my Windows 2000 machine and feel like scribbling around for no good reason. 😀