The company wants to prioritize new expectations, which include serious changes.
Development can’t stop, and AI is now inevitable. In Microsoft’s case, that means Copilot, which is also available from the Edge browser, but that comes with leaving the old behind. The folks from Redmond just did that for Windows 10, which is still working for a lot of users, with the latest update, which focuses on the aforementioned Copilot, but WordPad said goodbye and Notepad was also converted. And the company didn’t stop there.
Microsoft is currently working on a new Outlook app to serve all the email needs of Windows 11 users, which means not only the retirement of the older Outlook, but also other apps we used to manage our mail in the operating system. For example, Windows Mail and Calendar, which were the default email and calendar programs, are now being phased out.
The extent of Microsoft’s focus on the new Outlook, which builds on Outlook.com on the web, is no better evidence than the fact that the company has confirmed that the Mail and Calendar apps will be phased out by the end of 2024, starting with a forced transition to Windows 11. Currently, Microsoft is allowing Outlook users to revert to the previous email experience, but it looks like the switch will become increasingly difficult to achieve.
The option can be turned on in Outlook settings, but when enabled, it can only be used to revert to the Mail and Calendar apps “temporarily” — once you turn them off, everything reverts to default. This means that eventually the switch will disappear from the settings entirely, and both Mail and Calendar will be removed from the system. Since we’ve already started the second semester of 2024, this move could happen soon.
Of course, using Outlook will not be mandatory, and other email clients will also be available, such as Thunderbird, but sooner or later we will say goodbye to the older Windows Mail & Calendar, and Microsoft will probably use all means to draw the attention of users of external developments that they will work better with Outlook.
