Microsoft "caves," puts Classic Paint on the Windows Store for free.

Behold! A ridiculous story reaches its inevitable conclusion.

From CNBC:

Microsoft is not killing off its Paint app in the next update of Windows 10, the company said late on Monday, after fears that the iconic software could be ditched.

[...]

Fans on social media decried the potential death of Paint, which has been in existence for 32 years.

But Microsoft released a blog post shortly after to clarify that Paint would not be completely removed, but instead made available via the Windows Store 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," Megan Saunders, a general manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post on Monday.

"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."

I still say that the outcry over Paint not actually being removed from Windows 10 in the Fall Creators Update was ridiculous, but Microsoft putting the classic app in the Windows Store, right alongside Paint 3D, and also for free, was probably inevitable. Microsoft have suffered a lot of well-earned bad PR recently; "caving" (without really caving) to fans of Paint was an easy win, and I'm not surprised they took it.

Now can we get back to holding Microsoft's feet to the fire over shit that actually matters?

Today in Windows 10...

We're definitely into the summer doldrums, with very little of anything happening, but here are two tidbits that caught my eye today.

First up, from Mike Wheatley at siliconANGLE:

Although Microsoft Corp. probably deserves a ten out of ten for the efforts its made to make Windows 10 more enterprise friendly, it turns out the operating system is only slightly more popular than the aging Windows XP among business users.

That’s the main takeaway from a new survey on Windows 10 adoption by information technology network Spiceworks Inc. The survey found that Windows XP, which is by now most likely riddled with security holes as it no longer receives regular updates, is still being run on 11 percent of business PCs, down from 14 percent in March. That compares to just 13 percent of business PCs running Windows 10.

“Despite the gains in Windows 10 penetration, the absolute share of computers running the OS remains relatively low,” said Peter Tsai, senior technology analyst at Spiceworks.

Both operating systems remain a long way behind Microsoft’s legendary Windows 7 operating system, which is running on 68 percent of all enterprise PCs, Spiceworks found. However, Windows 10 does at least come second with its 13 percent adoption rate, and its overall share has improved markedly in recent months – back in March, it was only running on nine percent of business computers, Spiceworks said.

Ouch.

Bear in mind that Windows 10 is the future of Microsoft, on which they've basically bet the farm at this point; with general usage languishing at or below the 26% mark for months, Microsoft was counting on business adoption to make their Windows 10 strategy work. If these numbers are to be believe, then that isn't happening yet, at least not in any big way; the fact that Windows 10 is only finally outperforming the nearly sixteen year old Windows XP, after everything that Microsoft has done, must surely speak to some significant underlying issues. I doubt that the recent revelation that older hardware may not be supported by future Windows 10 builds will help, either.

I'll admit, I am looking forward to the end-of-July NetMarketShare stats, but I'm not expecting Microsoft to make any changes to their approach this year. Thousands of annual layoffs and stagnant market growth for their flagship product notwithstanding, the markets seem generally bullish on MSFT these days, which gives Satya Nadella all the cover he needs to keep right on failing.

That's all for tidbit one, though. Tidbit two is getting a lot more coverage, like this piece in The Reg: