14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has been very committed to offering Windows 10 with a pre-installed set of core apps for the essential activities that users typically perform every day, but as the company is reorganizing its business, plans for the future of Windows are also being updated.
As a result, one change that Windows 10 could undergo would be the retirement of some Windows 10 apps, with a report claiming that Microsoft is already winding down development of several included applications.
Thurrott writes that stocks and weather apps coming with Windows 10 could be the first victims, though there might be several other names on Microsoft’s blacklist, including Mail and Calendar. On the other hand, it’s not known if these could get the ax as well because they “have a higher priority because of their usage,” the report says.
Edge team expanding
Engineers working on the apps that are supposed to be impacted by these changes are moving to the Edge team, as Microsoft is more committed to improving the browser in Redstone 5.
At the same time, the Edge development team is also getting more members from other units of the Windows group as Microsoft has canceled several Redstone 5 features, and engineers are being transitioned to the browser instead, the report adds.
Microsoft will pay more focus to enterprise features in the coming years, and these internal changes show that Redstone 5 due in the fall could be the first to more strongly push Windows into this direction.
And while apps like stocks and weather might be retired, Microsoft is investing aggressively in PWA apps, which could help the company address the lack of apps in the Store in an easier and more effective manner.
At this point, there are only a few PWA apps listed for download, but if core Windows 10 apps are retired, Microsoft could become one of the pioneers of this new push in a similar way it did with UWP back in 2015.