RIP Microsoft Paint. Thanks for All the Hideous Doodles

Microsoft Paint is dead, but it won't be forgotten.
RIP Microsoft Paint. Thanks for All the Hideous Doodles
HOTLITTLEPOTATO

In 1996, the year my father brought home our first Gateway desktop, there was little for a ten-year-old to do on a computer. I'd play Minesweeper and browse Encarta, but my favorite way to waste time was fooling around with the palette of rudimentary drawing tools on Microsoft Paint. The simple graphics software came preinstalled on computers running Window’s operating system, and the program was completely idiot-proof. You didn’t have to know a thing about technology to use it, which made Paint the entry point to personal computing for an entire generation.

Decades later, that's no longer the case. Paint is now a relic of computing history—one that very soon will be abandoned, after an update to Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows 10 Creator's Edition. The application, along with Reader and Outlook Express, has been moved to its list of “removed or deprecated features,” which means it’s only a matter of time until the software permanently fades into obscurity.

Go ahead and shed a tear, but don't act surprised. At a time when Microsoft is attempting to reinvent itself as a company for the creative class, Paint serves as a reminder of how utterly bad its creativity tools have always been. Plenty of artists and designers use Paint to wonderful effect, but besides those few notable exceptions, nearly everything created with Paint is bad.

The OG application will be survived by Paint 3-D, a more technologically advanced version of the original that lets people build and scan objects in three dimensions. Paint 3-D aligns with Microsoft’s vision of the future, where artists can make glossy, multi-dimensional visuals best suited for the mixed reality world we'll soon live in. (The original Paint will be available to download in the Windows Store, but won't receive updates, according to a representative from Microsoft.)

And that all makes sense. I don’t recall the first or last thing I made with Microsoft Paint, but nothing I ever made was particularly good. Its interface is simple but clunky. The tools are basic and rigid. Early versions of Paint were plagued by a latency that made it difficult for even the most coordinated to draw anything beyond slightly elevated chicken scratch. And its software, which was never elegant to begin with, didn’t receive any major updates between 1995 and 2007.

It’s hard to blame Microsoft for abandoning the original product. But for those of us with a soft spot for nostalgia, it will be missed. No one is concerned about losing a valuable tool (and even if you were, you can download plenty of other excellent drawing and painting apps, or the new and improved Paint 3-D). Instead, saying goodbye to Paint feels like technological gentrification. In moving on to something newer, shinier, and less messy, we're losing a window into a simpler time, when computer literacy could be as simple as dragging your mouse to make a masterpiece.

This story has been updated to clarify that although Microsoft is sunsetting the original Paint application, it will still be available to download in the Microsoft Store.