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back to article You're alone in a room with the Windows 10 out-of-the-box apps. What do you do?

Imagine you’ve just returned to work from a lengthy sabbatical and found, among the thousands of increasingly shrill and unanswered emails in your mailbox, one telling you that you are now the proud product owner of a bunch of Windows OS apps. What would you do? Steve Teixeira, a general manager in Microsoft’s Windows and …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows as a Service

    Do Win10 users own anything??? Its subscription model hell forever.

    You can't even get compensation for Windows, so what do you own!

    ___________

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/24/microsoft_windows_10_update/

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/12/which_calls_for_compensation_for_customers_amidst_windows_10_upgrade_fail/

    28 7 Reply
  2. onefang

    I'd open source the little horrors.

    46 1 Reply
    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Reply Icon
      Childcatcher

      Source of Little Horrors

      I'd open source the little horrors.

      Yes, but what would you do if you start finding Notepad open on your computer every night with just a single line showing?

      ----> "Feed me, Seymour!"

      18 0 Reply
      1. onefang
        Reply Icon

        Re: Source of Little Horrors

        I'd invite Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella into my office, lock them in with the computer, and let them battle it out. The survivor gets to be Microsoft CEO. A mean green mother from outer space probably couldn't do any worse at running Microsoft than the other three.

        7 2 Reply
        1. Danny 14
          Reply Icon

          Re: Source of Little Horrors

          new provisioned apps are a pain to maintain. we uninstall just about all of them via a powershell script (uninstall per user AND the provisioned store too so new profiles wont get them).

          calc is a copy of windows 7 calc, notepad++, paint.net, chrome. start menu is an xml copied locally then gpo'd (containing good old fashioned .lnk files). windows doesn't manage printers, there is an old school .lnk to explorer.exe shell for the old printer management. etc etc.

          w10 boots quick and with roaming profiles logs in in about 35 seconds on old 1st gen i3s (redirected desktop, documents and appdata).

          store is installed but locked off via applocker (we have minecraft installed as a user app on some machines and toshiba print management software as an app on others )

          all works well on 1803. Boy was it a fuck about from 1604 to get to this point.

          8 0 Reply
  3. Marco van de Voort

    Not turn them in to apps.

    The speed of notepad for a quick edit is pretty much the main reason to use it. Please no UWP nonsense!

    73 1 Reply
    1. Terry 6 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Not turn them in to apps.

      And above all none of that UWP shite of removing a few useful features first . I have Onenote 2016 and it's almost as good as Evernote used to be (before they restricted its use) for my work. The cut down Win10/UWP version is just rubbish.

      Edit: Just saw the post about calculator. Another very good example of UWP crap software replacing a perfectly good version.

      39 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not turn them in to apps.

      Many Windows utilities need a refresh and some more features, as a text editor Notepad is really primitive today - I guess a lot of Windows users use Notepad++ or something alike (which could be used as an inspiration, although its programmers may not like it).

      But they are apps that need to be powerful enough but not intrusive - once upon a time maybe they could be used to showcase the OS features, but today not - leave it to other applications, not basic utilities, especially if touch-enabling and UWPing them makes them less far usable. And please, no .NET and JS stuff!!!

      17 1 Reply
      1. fatal
        Reply Icon

        Re: Not turn them in to apps.

        I suspect the developers already use notepad++ themselves

        46 1 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not turn them in to apps.

          I suspect the developers already use notepad++ themselves

          Curse you, website, for only giving me one upvote (without creating extra accounts, that is, that would be cheating :) ).

          8 1 Reply
        2. Spazturtle Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Not turn them in to apps.

          Not sure about this particular team but some windows software teams use macs running linux for their development environment. Internally they will use whatever allows them to get the job done as fast as possible, time is money after all.

          9 1 Reply
        3. richardcox13
          Reply Icon

          Re: Not turn them in to apps.

          > I suspect the developers already use notepad++ themselves

          More likely VS Code (for obvious reasons), but any dev org that locked down that choice (Sublime Text FTW!) would find retention even more challenging.

          6 0 Reply
        4. lsces
          Reply Icon

          Re: Not turn them in to apps.

          Surely any good developer is already on Linux ... and has better tools already ;)

          11 11 Reply
          1. katrinab Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: Not turn them in to apps.

            Go to the Windows App store, install Ubuntu[1], then a simple ‘apt-get install emacs’ will get you the best text editor available.

            [1] Before you all start flaming me about my choice of distro, yes, there are other distros, I tried them all, and I found that within Windows 10’s subsystem for Linux, Ubuntu was the most reliable. Otherwise, I’m not a huge Ubuntu fan, I mostly prefer FreeBSD.

            3 5 Reply
            1. onefang
              Reply Icon

              Re: Not turn them in to apps.

              "then a simple ‘apt-get install mc’ will get you the best text editor available."

              FTFY, you had all those extra letters in the packages name.

              "I found that within Windows 10’s subsystem for Linux, Ubuntu was the most reliable."

              I think that's the distro Windows 10 Linux subsystem was built around, so that's no surprise.

              0 1 Reply
            2. Guevera
              Reply Icon

              Re: Not turn them in to apps.

              A simple 'apt-get install emacs'

              You must be using DVORAK or something too misspell 'vim' so badly.

              8 0 Reply
              1. gyffes
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                Re: Not turn them in to apps.

                He wouldn't've made the mistake at all if he'd been using nano...

                1 0 Reply
            3. JohnFen
              Reply Icon

              Re: Not turn them in to apps.

              I think it's better to install Linux as the base OS, then run Windows in a VM.

              1 0 Reply
        5. Marco van de Voort
          Reply Icon

          Re: Not turn them in to apps.

          I'm a developer. For anything serious developer will fire up a serious IDE, and for a quick edit notepad is preinstalled and good enough.

          (quick inventory : my devel machine contains VS, Delphi+Lazarus, MP Lab (classic and X) and TexWorks)

          7 0 Reply
      2. JohnFen
        Reply Icon

        Re: Not turn them in to apps.

        "as a text editor Notepad is really primitive today"

        That's the major feature of Notepad, and it shouldn't change. Having a lean, bare-bones text editor is a very, very good thing. Microsoft's Notepad with additional features is Wordpad, and there's always things like Notepad++.

        47 2 Reply
        1. matjaggard
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          Re: Not turn them in to apps.

          Notepad++ takes too long to start. Notepad is fast, really fast. I always replace notepad with notepad2 because it is also fast but handles line endings, large files and some syntax highlighting.

          11 3 Reply
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            "Notepad++ takes too long to start"

            Don't how many plug-ins you load, but my Notepad++ start is instantaneous.

            I don't advocate to make Notepad a bloated application, but it lacks features you expect from a text editor today. And the average computer is enough powerful to not blink if they're added.

            For example, it can't become stuck if you open a large file. It needs better search (and maybe replace) features. Some syntax highlighting would be welcome.

            9 4 Reply
            1. Updraft102
              Reply Icon

              Re: "Notepad++ takes too long to start"

              Don't how many plug-ins you load, but my Notepad++ start is instantaneous.

              I've never used Notepad++, but I had to wonder what the deal was with everyone saying it takes too long to load. When I used to use Windows, I used Metapad in place of Notepad for years, and it has all kinds of features that were lacking in Notepad, like the CR/CR+LF ability. At 190KB, most of which is the embedded icon, the program (a standalone .exe) loads instantly. How much larger can Notepad++ possibly be?

              I remember encountering the same kind of thing when I revisited KDE Plasma recently. Since Mint has dropped their KDE version, I tried Kubuntu, then converted that to KDE Neon (rebased 18.04) by swapping in the repo and updating.

              Kubuntu comes with Kate as the default text editor, while KDE Neon uses Kwrite. Both are official products of KDE. Why two text editors? I looked it up, and apparently, Kate is so feature-heavy that it supposedly starts too slow, so Kwrite is offered as a pared-down version that starts much quicker.

              On my systems, I can get out "one" of "one, one thousand" before Kate is ready to use. I never saw much point in switching to Kwrite to reduce that fraction of a second even further. YMMV if you're not using a SSD, but if the time it takes for a text editor (even a really heavy one) to start bothers you, you really should be.

              4 0 Reply
            2. JohnFen
              Reply Icon

              Re: "Notepad++ takes too long to start"

              "Some syntax highlighting would be welcome."

              In my view, that would be adding unnecessary bloat right there. Notepad isn't, and shouldn't be, a "programmers editor". It should remain just a plain and simple text editor.

              2 0 Reply
              1. Anonymous Coward
                Reply Icon
                Anonymous Coward

                "It should remain just a plain and simple text editor."

                Sure, but when you're editing some scripts on a server, or a config file maybe in XML, YAML or whatever, some syntax highlighting is welcome, because it reduces the chances of making mistakes, and it won't add much bloat - make it optional, if you fear your computer is too underpowered to run it - c'mon TurboPascal editor could do it on a 286 with 640K of RAM...

                0 1 Reply
        2. Shadow Systems
          Reply Icon

          Re: Not turn them in to apps.

          I'll second that the ultra simple Notepad is just about perfect for editing plain text files. About the only function I can think of that would be nice to have is the ability to Sort, but other than that it's fine just the way it is. I also use Notepad++ for larger files & more complex functions, but it's serious overkill just to Sort a block of text. MS Word 2016 Professional is SO far overkill that it's like hiring a giant lorry capable of hauling hundreds of tonnes of dirt per dumper fill to pull your child in a little red wagon around the yard. To add insult to injury is the fact that Notepad is accessible to a screen reader whereas the full MS Office is an utter crapshoot as to which parts are, which parts are not, & which ones will (not) be the next time you launch the blighted, bloated thing. I don't need Word just to Sort a block of text, I don't *want* some massively bloated program just to do simple editing, & I'm disgusted with the thought of what MS might do to Something That Works in the name of "improving the user experience". Here's a way to improve this user's experience: leave the fekkin' thing alone!

          17 0 Reply
      3. pungy
        Reply Icon

        Re: Not turn them in to apps.

        "Many Windows utilities need a refresh and some more features, as a text editor Notepad is really primitive today"

        That mentality is what's wrong with Windows today. Notepad is SUPPOSED to be barebones and super fast. If you want to write an HTML document, use Notepad++. If you want to write a BAT, use Notepad.

        30 2 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not turn them in to apps.

          Notepad is SUPPOSED to be barebones and super fast.

          If you really want barebones, try EDLIN. You need to be of a masochistic nature to fully appreciate it, though, and I think they may have finally removed it in Win 10.

          :)

          14 0 Reply
          1. Lyndon Hills 1
            Reply Icon

            Re: Not turn them in to apps.

            Edlin had the ability to be used along with a file of commands to be executed, which was pretty useful occasionally. The next comment (when I was reading) suggests programmers are using Linux, in which case they can do all the same sort of things from the shell.

            5 0 Reply
          2. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Not turn them in to apps.

            Your comment made me think of this :)

            https://mwl.io/nonfiction/tools#ed

            0 0 Reply
          3. herman
            Reply Icon

            Re: Not turn them in to apps.

            I think edlin.com is the only usable program ever written in brainfuck.

            3 0 Reply
          4. Terry 6 Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: Not turn them in to apps.

            I tried to remember EDLIN. I know I once used it a lpt. But nothing returned. Except a vague feeling of dread.

            1 0 Reply
          5. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
            Reply Icon
            Headmaster

            Re: Not turn them in to apps.

            EDLIN - Cripes now that's going back at least 30 years with Chernobyl (That's what we nicknamed our tutor) at Swindon North Star College.

            2 0 Reply
          6. Alan Bourke
            Reply Icon

            Re: Not turn them in to apps.

            EDLIN? Go on out of that with your bloatware.

            copy con myfile.txt <enter>

            line 1 <enter>

            line 2 <enter>

            ctrl-z

            Bingo.

            3 0 Reply
          7. Steve the Cynic
            Reply Icon

            Re: Not turn them in to apps.

            If you really want barebones, try EDLIN. You need to be of a masochistic nature to fully appreciate it, though, and I think they may have finally removed it in Win 10.

            As far as I know, it's still in 32-bit builds of Win10, but not (because it's still a DOS executable) in 64-bit builds.

            Indeed, the Unreliable Source says so, for what that's worth.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edlin

            1 0 Reply
    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Please no UWP nonsense!

      BIG! THUMBS! UP!

      8 1 Reply
    4. Wibble
      Reply Icon

      Re: Not turn them in to apps.

      Notepad does need updating. Nothing much but having an undo buffer and little things such as multi-line tab indenting, column cut/copy/paste, maybe allowing multi-document tabs would go a long way. Sure, it's better than nothing, but only just.

      6 2 Reply
      1. Danny 14
        Reply Icon

        Re: Not turn them in to apps.

        my notepad++ opens as fast as notepad. be thar context menu or start menu.

        4 0 Reply
      2. david 12 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Not turn them in to apps.

        >Notepad does need updating. Nothing much but having an undo buffer and little things such as multi-line tab indenting, column cut/copy/paste, maybe allowing multi-document tabs would go a long way.<

        Those would be good improvements to WordPad. Notepad doesn't have to compete with WordPad.

        2 3 Reply
  4. Dwarf

    How can it be in anyone's interest to remove apps like this from the OS ?

    When in the history of computing hasn't a system come with a basic text editor ?

    These get used for any of a thousand different problems - tweaking config files, basic text manipulation, looking at log files.

    Many places won't allow external software downloads either, so tying to get the Vogons in change management to approve such a change will often prove pointless.

    47 2 Reply
    1. Flakk
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      tying to get the Vogons in change management to approve such a change will often prove pointless.

      Well, if you wouldn't insist on publishing code that was written whilst under the influence of two Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters, we wouldn't need Change Management!

      32 1 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      How can it be in anyone's interest to remove apps like this from the OS ?

      I suspect you haven't been using Microsoft software for that long then.

      Here is a possible scenario:

      1 - isolate (done)

      2 - bar access to any apps but those in a MS controlled shop (probably next, I'm betting on "security" as the argument although that is about the most laughable claim especially Microsoft could come up with)

      3 - make them part of an optional package - at an extra charge.

      Given the way most corporates bend over backwards to hand MS a lot of money, they'll get away with it too. After all, they have been for decades..

      13 0 Reply
    3. Crazy Operations Guy
      Reply Icon

      "When in the history of computing hasn't a system come with a basic text editor ?"

      RHEL 7 when you install using the 'minimal' option. Comes with a web server, but doesn't have nano, emacs, vim, vi, and even lacks ed. Fortunately it does have grep, sed, cat, and echo. RHEL has abandoned the command line and now expects you use the GUI for everything (Seriously, fuck you NetworkManager)

      15 0 Reply
    4. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      "How can it be in anyone's interest to remove apps like this from the OS "

      For Micro-shaft, it's all about LOCKING YOU IN TO SOME SUBSCRIPTION-BASED BLOATWARE for *EVERYTHING*. And with UWP/FLATSO for that "new, shiny" effect.

      For the end-user, not such a good thing at all.

      /me reaches for the pink liquid

      6 2 Reply
  5. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Alert

    Oh God

    New boss, placed in charge of stuff that doesn't really need changing, what could possibly go wrong?

    46 1 Reply
    1. 9Rune5
      Reply Icon

      Re: Oh God

      SteveT is one of the good guys. I believe the outcome will be just fine.

      4 1 Reply
      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Meh

        Re: Oh God

        "SteveT is one of the good guys."

        If THAT is true, MAYBE he can do something about the !@#$ 2D FLATNESS [and the spyware, and the adware, and the forced updates, ...]

        5 2 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh God

      You should read Steve Teixeira bio... and maybe a couple of his books, albeit dated, now.

      2 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'Proud owner of notepad and calc. What should we do'

    Clearly MS need to Cloud & AI them urgently. How can MS not know this?

    35 0 Reply
    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Re: 'Proud owner of notepad and calc. What should we do'

      They're too busy concentrating on blockchain and slurping.

      14 2 Reply

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