Specifically, the company is slowing development of several native Windows 10 applications. A report by Thurrott suggests applications like Weather and Stocks will be slowly shuttered and development will slow down. It seems to be Microsoft is focusing on native apps that are hardly essential. That means major services like OneNote will be fine, while apps like Mail and Calendar fall under Outlook’s umbrella. The real question here is why Microsoft is doing this to some apps? The report says employees from these smaller apps are being folded into the Edge team. Indeed, the Edge division is growing as it is also scoring some developers from now cancelled Windows 10 Redstone 5 features have also migrated. Let’s be honest, applications like Stocks and Weather are not exactly high priority for Microsoft. In fact, it could be argued it is better for Windows 10 if it does not have these types of smaller apps. Users would be more inclined to visit the Microsoft Store and download a third-party. Microsoft has been trying to grow the Windows Store for years, this could offer at least an incremental boost.
Changing Times
Of course, there will be some who will see this as further evidence that Microsoft is slowly but surely moving towards killing off Windows. I am not a subscriber to that train of thought, although the platform is clearly evolving into something different. The decision to wind down support on smaller Windows 10 apps seems more about using developer resources. Edge is clearly a more important product for Microsoft and the company wants more developers working on the browser.
