All the comments that "you can just use X to do Y" is missing the point that Paint just works, for almost every value of Y. No argument, Paint.net is great, snipping tool solves the grab and crop, but for most anything else you need to do in a hurry, you need a quick paint program. It's like removing Notepad: we all know hundreds of editors we would replace it with, from Notepad++ to vim/emacs... but isn't nice that when you aren't on your box, you know the core set of tools that are always there? (In other news, Fedora announces dropping grep, lc, and ls from the distro, in favor of python: "most users are devs, let them write their own tools" they stated in a press release).
Paint3D takes longer to load, and has made the simple... much less simple. While we can all say "Yes, that's the way of tech", it's just not necessary.
And yes, I still miss my 1/8" jack on my iphone. Every single day. And stay off my lawn, you whippersnappers.
Absolutely.
Paint is by a long shot, Microsoft's best product.
It's easy to build since it's codebase is pretty small
and they haven't changed it much since it was introduced.
So it's rock solid.
IDK why they're fixing what ain't broke.
Darn, it would be nice if MS was forced to break up in to different product divisions so that their Office product would be released on various platforms.
Except... it is released on various platforms. That 'Linux desktop' isn't part of it doesn't mean that Office isn't on pretty much every other relevant platform (Windows desktop, macOS, Android, iOS, web, ...).
They clearly nailed it, this video from the dev team shows how the understood their users and stuck to the requirements instead of the typical MS feature creep product
I have feeling that dithered fills have nothing to do with Paint itself but were feature of GDI, even one pixel wide lines and such things were dithered when drawn with dithered color.
It probably got removed in Windows 2000, when GDI gained alpha channel support, as the dithering mode was specified in upper byte of 32b COLORREF, which probably got at least internally repurposed as alpha (also, alphablending dithered surfaces is not exactly sane thing to do).
I remember dithered fills being in Paintbrush itself, using Windows 3.1. My memory is you had 16 colors to work with, and to get more than that it supported dithered colors. You could have, say, a red/yellow checkerboard. The UI let you treat these like other colors: you could save them, and draw with them. When you did that, each pixel in your BMP would be set to of the 16 allowed, but the overall impression would be of more than 16 colors.
In Paintbrush you had palette of 20-ish colors, which were or were not dithered depending on whether they were displayable by your graphics adapter. (The default palette consisted of 16 default EGA/VGA colors and few dithered ones, with particularly notable burgundy-ish color that almost didn't look dithered). In the control panel you could set arbitrary 24b RGB colors for user interface elements which were dithered in exactly the same way.
Interesting thing related to this is that Windows 3.1 had significantly different default color scheme depending on what graphics driver you selected during installation. The really default color scheme was similar to OS/2 2.x (pastel colors, active window title with black text on light blue background, different background color for MDI master and slave windows) and significantly different one was used for graphics drivers with 16 or less colors (ie. the one that everybody remembers, with white text on dark blue or black background for active window title bar). Obviously the reason for this was to eliminate dithering in default color scheme.
On the other hand, this was not applied consistently. Windows 3.1 post installation tutorial essentially introduced the pastel yellow (also used in the default color scheme for MDI window background) as the "help popup color", even thought this color was dithered on VGA. Another inconsistency was that Windows 3.1 shipped with CTRL3D.DLL and some (2 or so) applications that used it. (Until Windows 10's consistent Metro-ish style I regarded CTRL3D as the most consistent UI that Windows ever had, because most applications consistently used this same UI style. The Windows 95 HIG mandated style is also nice, but it was never used consistently used by anyone, not even Microsoft itself).
I learned programming in Qbasic. My parent's computer had some "menu" launcher, which let you choose between Win 3.1 and DOS. Most games (Doom / Lemmings / Commander Keen) were DOS based. So yeah, do I need to feel old now?
They did the same thing with the calculator, turning what is probably the simplest app on the entire computer into a Metro-ified flat-design-meme store-dependent mess for absolutely no benefit.
I went to open my calculator this morning and it told me it was in the middle of an update and to try again later. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes later it still wasn't done. I ended up using Google to calculate some basic math! How does Microsoft screw up such a simple application?
I've opened up the calculator a couple of times and gotten a prompt to rate/review it on the Windows Store... What is the purpose of doing that with built-in apps? It's just annoying.
cmd.exe and calc.exe from ReactOS can be used since ReactOS aims to be fully binary compatible. They look a bit bad though.
Or this is a good opportunity to use tools not built into the OS or write own replacements. It's a bit silly to have calc program dictated by the OS version.
I wonder if you could get into legal trouble if you start to re-distribute calc.exe from older Windows version, as a free download. Probably yes, but it would look so ridiculous if MS lawyers would go after a random person doing that.
The thing is that your Windows 8/7/Vista/XP versions of calc don't even run on Windows 10. The only thing you can run is the Calculator Plus that was released for XP. Of course Microsoft did remove the download for that one.
Not him, but I would have stayed on 8.1 too if it weren't for processor support. The only annoying thing about it is the start menu, which i only use for maybe 10sec/month. It's faster than win7 and has a bunch of features I would miss, and compared to 10 it's not as bloated with non-win32 apps with less functionality for everything, tracking that you can turn off, and all the other win10 stuff you've heard already.
It really I've was already using Launchy instead of Cortana. So, when I saw what a mess Calculator had become in 10, Launcy ended up replacing that too for simple calculations.
It's sad, because by themselves programs like Paint and Calculator are simple. But, when done well, they come together to improve the quality of life while using Windows.
Some time ago someone recommended SpeedCrunch to me for calculator stuff and I use it all the time now. It's a little bit less intuitive since it takes a syntax instead of presenting buttons, but it does a ton more.
I sometimes use a python REPL instead of a calculator. Python has `bin()` for binary representations. Plus imaginary numbers are built in. For more complicated stuff I reach for Wolfram alpha.
I'm curious about this - why do you no longer listen to music or podcasts? The phone comes with headphones that plug directly into the lightning port, and an 1/8" adapter so you can still use your old headphones.
Personally I just keep the adapter permanently attached to my 1/8" headphones. Only downside for me is the inability to charge at the same time, but then the iPhone 7's battery life is pretty great, so that's not a huge deal.
Probably because this person like many has multiple headphones. I have nicer "cans" I use at work. I have the crappy included ones that I use in the gym or when commuting. Noise cancelling buds for travel. And that's not even counting the times I might want to use the aux cord in my car. Having to carry around an adapter is dumb. I have a 6s and will not be upgrading to any phone without a headphone jack
The aux cord in the car was actually a major concern for me too when I was considering upgrading to the 7. And then I found this $15 bluetooth FM transmitter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KJJP1TG/
The sound quality is fantastic and it's easily way more convenient than using an aux cable: No cord, and it has play/pause and track skip buttons on it!
Also has a microphone for Siri/phone calls though I've never used it to speak to its quality.
There are a bunch of similar ones on Amazon with slightly varying features.
I do understand it would be frustrating to swap the dongle around if you have multiple headphones though. Worth noting that the "crappy included ones" that come with the phone are already lightning though so they don't need an adapter.
"just" by a dongle for each set of headphones you regularly use. For me, that means one dongle, but if I had 'work headphones' I would instantly buy a second dongle so I would never have to worry about this.
Obviously that is objectionable on a $$$ apple tax $$$ level, but pragmatically it's not much of an issue.
I do still miss the mini RCA jack, however, because on occasion I do forget my headphones & adapter and can't use any other normal headphones. (And I hate charging headphones and wearing batteries on my ears)
I completely forgot it was 'missing' one until I had the phone for a week or two.
Thankfully all my listening is in the car, over the speaker, via Sonos, via AirPlay or Spotify Connect, or on my Bose QC35 or Jaybirds X3 bluetooth headphones.
It was a mistake. I sometimes think about "upgrading" (downgrading) to a two year old iPhone 6s to get a headphone jack again but it is not available in 256gb.
I just used Paint3D for the first time last night and was astounded by how terrible it is.
Confirming to scale an image by manually entering a % value requires you to click outside of the value field BUT inside the scale dialog. That's right - there's no Apply or Confirm button, you just have to figure out to click there. Pressing Return or Enter doesn't do it either.
On the second open, there was a "rate this app in the app store if you like it" popup.
"And yes, I still miss my 1/8" jack on my iphone. Every single day. And stay off my lawn, you whippersnappers."
Interestingly, my teenage sons use the phrase "pass the aux", meaning let me drive the music we are currently listening to over the party speakers with my phone.
So yes, Apple's attempt to kill the aux jack was definitely premature, even among young tech savvy people.
your tone suggests one's preferences should be dictated by a corporation's interests; it's perfectly reasonable that the 1/8" jack solves problems for the user that the lightning jack does not solve. Even if they don't even include a 1/8" jack on future products, it could still have been preferable from the individual point of view.
Either you replied to the wrong person or you are majorly projecting your own displeasure. They just asked if the other person was planning on sticking with the iPhone in the future or moving to something that still includes the headphone jack. There was no negative tone to be inferred from that post.
"And yes, I still miss my 1/8" jack on my iphone. Every single day. And stay off my lawn, you whippersnappers."
In my case so that I can use, with appropriate adapters in some cases, reasonably nice over-ear headphones (Beyerdynamic, Grado and Seinheiser). Do I really need several stages of modulation, propogation, reception and demodulation between me and my signal?
Exactly this. It's nice that lightning theoretically gives you more throughput but it's completely pointless if the signal has to get transformed a half dozen times between device and ear.
And all the nicer phones aren't going to lightning cables either because the Pro Audio community (the people primarily buying $3-400 non Beats headphones) would revolt.
I dunno. Decent cans don't generally drive well from phones anyway - so you're stuck with an external amp. Many amps have integrated DACs... why not just feed digital audio to the amp/dac via lightning?
I still haven't found anything similar on Mac. It's the biggest thing I miss after making the switch. Preview is close, but still not the same. And Gimp, the usual recommendation, is far, far far far too heavyweight to be a valid comparison to Paint.
You can take a look at Pinta[0] I don't recall if it's a clone or a port of Paint.Net, but works for me as a quick tool... the OS integration (open with) needs some work though. It uses Mono as a portable runtime and is decent enough, again for most work. IMHO easier to use than Gimp, though not as feature rich.
You don't need it on a mac. You can take a screenshot of a part of the screen only, and it saves it to an image on your desktop, you can send to anyone.
Checkout ShareX, I was a long time Greenshot user (and it even integrates the nice annotation stuff from Greenshot) but I switched because it has an even nicer UI and a host of additional features while remaining simple to use (still free though.)
But ShareX does not have an image editor, like Greenshot. Which is the whole reason we are discussing alternatives to paint. Or am I wrong and someone implemented one?
I don't understand the love for Paint. It's terrible at almost every single thing it does. Cropping is complicated. Resizing is complicated. Text and drawing result in a blocky mess. It's just unfortunate Paint 3D is a slug.
Despite what happened to his software, which is clearly unfortunate, it's a shame to see it turn closed source. I would have thought that projects would be hopefully moving toward more free licenses.
In this case, "more capable" is an anti-feature. Paint "just works" because it's so damn simple and easy. And with the added benefit that it comes pre-installed, so you don't need to comparison shop between four other tools to see if you like them or not.
GIMP is the only one I'm familiar with, and it doesn't "just work". There is a definite and steep learning curve, including why you can't 'just save an image' like you save any other document.
Woh, why would a distribution drop something as common as grep? Saying you can build it yourself sounds crazy when it always exists and cross-platform...
I don't see many Windows users hanging out in the CLI for extended periods of time, either. Even though OP wasn't serious about fedora nixing grep, surely you see the lack of equivalence in that argument.
I would argue that they used cygwin, and now they have the option of using WSL- which I have been using for the last two months, and thus far has met my CLI needs.
Paint3D takes longer to load, and has made the simple... much less simple. While we can all say "Yes, that's the way of tech", it's just not necessary.
And yes, I still miss my 1/8" jack on my iphone. Every single day. And stay off my lawn, you whippersnappers.