A month ago, I warned that support for Windows Essentials 2012 was ending. Today, it’s gone. You can no longer download this still-useful suite of utilities.
Well, the download is gone. So. Yeah.
This is bad news on a number of levels, the most obvious being that Microsoft doesn’t have an acceptable replacement for Windows Movie Maker, which was a simple but easy-to-use video editor.
As for the other apps in the suite, most are well past their prime. OneDrive is now included in Windows, of course, and Windows Live Writer is now available in open source (and supported) form, for the few people who need or want to actually install an app to write blog posts. Windows Live Messenger was long ago replaced by Skype, which I think most will agree has not exactly gone well. Hope springs eternal.
Aside from Windows Movie Maker, the biggest loss here, however, is Windows Photo Gallery, which includes an incredible array of functionality that the Photos app in Windows 10 will never duplicate.
Despite this, Microsoft actually recommends the built-in apps in Windows as replacements. That would be hilarious if this wasn’t so bad.