• R.I.P. WP, WMP

    Posted on October 9, 2017 at 09:47 CDT by • Comment in the Forums

    Capping off a lackluster week of Windows non-news, the weekend brought two more headstones, hardly worthy of note. But I’ll note them anyway.

    First, MS Corporate VP for Windows Joe Belfiore confirmed in a series of tweets that Windows 10 Mobile is dead as a doornail. Zac Bowden, who’s been using Win10 Mobile far beyond its obvious expiration date, has details on Windows Central. (Formerly WPCentral, as in “Windows Phone Central” – a timely pivot.)

    I’ve never covered Windows Phone, and don’t understand why anyone would bother.

    I mentioned Edge’s coming metamorphosis to run on iOS and Android:

    Why would anybody use an also-ran browser just because it has Microsoft’s name on it?

    Then there’s the Microsoft Launcher on Android, now in beta. Hope springs eternal, I guess.

    Second, it looks like Microsoft is going to kick Windows Media Player out of the Win10 Fall Creators Update with a patch released to some folks yesterday called KB 4046355. I haven’t seen it on my FCU machines, but Günter Born and Martin Brinkmann both have full details. Says Born:

    Until now, the Windows Media Player was on board and pre-installed in Windows 10. If you enter Media in the search field of the taskbar, Windows Media Player will be found and displayed as a hit in the Start menu.

    Today I was suddenly offered a FeatureOnDemandMediaPlayer update (KB4046355) on one of my machines (a 64-bit Windows machine) running Windows 10 Build 16299.15.

    A search using the taskbar’s search box actually revealed that Windows Media Player had been removed from the machine as features. To use the WMP again, you have to add it as a feature.

    If you know anybody who’s still using Windows Media Player, encourage them to take short, deep breaths, and break the  news that there are myriad far, far better media players around, on all platforms.

    Of course, without any documentation, it’s anybody’s guess if this is an intended consequence or just a beta bug.

    Yes, I know, it’s not polite for MS to yank an app without warning. On the other hand, man, Windows has become so bloated and Byzantine, it has to be pulled into the 20th century at some point.

    UPDATE: Mary Jo Foley reports:

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