Microsoft is saying goodbye to WordPad, its long-supported rich text application, which will no longer receive updates as of September 1.
The brand recently announced that the app is now among its list of deprecated Windows features. Microsoft explained the difference between deprecation and removal, noting that the former is when a feature is at the end of its life cycle and is no longer in active development, and the latter is when a feature is removed after having been deprecated.
WordPad is set to be removed from the Windows OS in a future update, but hasn’t yet reached that point. With Windows 12 expected to be released sometime in 2024, WordPad’s final end-of-life could come at that point. However, Microsoft doesn’t typically get rid of its programs that quickly.
This free rich text editor might have been long forgotten or not be known by many more recent Windows users. Microsoft suggested alternatives in its announcement: the subscription-based Microsoft Word for rich text editing, including .doc and .rtf, and Windows Notepad for plain text, such as .txt.
As Microsoft sundowns WordPad, it has also recently announced updates to the Notepad app, which includes autosave and restoring tabs. The plain text editor got its first update in years in 2018 and was then updated again in conjunction with the Windows 11 update, which introduced tabs to its layout, the Verge noted.
Microsoft also took a similar trajectory with the retirement of other programs such as the Internet Explorer browser. The app took eight years to be phased out and still lives on in the “Reload in IE mode” button on the Microsoft Edge browser. This mode allows you to view websites and applications based on legacy scripts and code in a more compatible fashion.
Microsoft plans to support IE mode at least through 2029, making it so the base technology that runs Internet Explorer and associated software, including MSHTML and Trident engine, will still be on Windows for the foreseeable future.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.