The Windows Forecast is a look at the future of Windows that comments on the latest news for Windows Insiders, as well as other major announcements in the Windows space each and every week. My name is João Carrasqueira, and I've been covering the world of Windows professionally since 2018. If there's something you'd like to see covered, you can reach me at joao@xda-developers.com.
It has been an eventful week for Windows fans. After following up on its promise to erase Paint 3D from existence, Microsoft delivered some major updates for Windows Insiders this week, making Copilot+ PCs — and Windows on Arm specifically — a bit more enticing. Let's dive into this week's highlights.
Windows on Arm just keeps getting more exciting
More and more apps are supported
The big highlight of the week for me has to be the new Windows 11 build that Microsoft released to Windows Insiders in the Canary channel this week. In an unusual move for Microsoft, this one actually makes sense and introduces a new feature that's available in the Canary channel before any of the other rings. And I suspect it may stay that way for a while, because it's a pretty important change for the platform.
Basically, this new build introduces a new feature for the Prism emulator on Arm devices, which is responsible for running x86 apps. The emulator now supports additional CPU extensions like AVX and AVX2, which apps like Adobe Premiere Pro need to function. And while Premiere Pro got special treatment and was supported early, this new build means any app that uses these extensions can now run on Arm devices.
Here's what emulated x86 software is really like on Snapdragon X Elite
From Lightroom Classic to Slack, here are the ups and downs
If you follow my work at all, you know I'm already all-in on Arm PCs, and things have already improved to the point where most people would be totally fine using Windows on Arm. But with this update, these devices are truly becoming greats PCs for everyone, and that's incredibly important. As great as Windows on Arm devices have been, it's always come with the same caveat. All the reviews will say "It's great, unless..." and this is a very big step in changing that.
Even aside from Microsoft, the past week has brought some nice news for Arm fans. Vegas Pro has announced support for Arm though the Arm64EC ABI, and both ProtonVPN and Telegram Desktop have added native support for Arm devices. It's so exciting to see this ecosystem grow more and more.
Windows 11's AI features get confusing
What's the point of Copilot+ PCs?
In more unsurprising news, Microsoft continues to bring more and more AI features to Windows 11, whether we like it or not. Notepad got a feature called Rewrite, which is basically what Copilot could already do on the web, but now built into the Notepad app. Basically, you can select any part of the text and have Copilot reword it to have a different tone. It doesn't run locally on your PCs, so it requires you to use AI credits, which I don't really get. Most of these AI features should, in my opinion, have the option to run them locally if you have a Copilot+ PC.
Meanwhile, Paint has a whole slew of AI updates, adding generative erase and generative fill as options. What's weird about this is that only generative fill is exclusive to Copilot+ PCs, though even that seems to be temporary based on Microsoft's wording, even though it was initially announced as a Copilot+ feature at the start of October.
Microsoft details the second wave of Copilot+ — 5 new features that are coming
Recall is finally arriving, plus a lot more
I really don't understand Microsoft's approach as to what is deserving of being exclusive to Copilot+ PCs or enhanced by them. The only features so far that are actually exclusive to Copilot+ PCs aren't really worth it. Most of the features at launch were worthless, and we got Super Resolution in Photos last week, which is also kind of uninteresting. If Microsoft's plan is to just keep adding AI features that everyone can use with no benefits for NPU users, the Copilot+ brand won't survive a whole year.
Why not simply offer the option to either run a given workload locally or in the cloud? That would give Copilot+ PCs a selling point already since they can save AI credits and not depend on the internet every time.
That being said, at least Cocreator in Paint got an updated model that should produce better images, and that's still exclusive to Copilot+ PCs. But that doesn't make it any less useless. Copilot+ needs interesting features, and it seems like Microsoft isn't really trying to do that.
Bye-bye, Paint 3D
We hardly knew ye... because we didn't want to
Rounding out this week, the Paint 3D app introduced in Windows 10 was officially delisted from the Microsoft Store and it won't get any updates going forward. Just like most things Microsoft does, this was a pretty half-hearted effort, though, since you can still easily get a direct link to the app, even by using the search bar in Windows itself, and it installs just fine.
This secret trick lets you get retired Paint 3D from the Microsoft Store
Paint 3D fans, rejoice! You can still download it from the Microsoft Store using a clever workaround.
No one likes losing beloved features, and thankfully, we aren't this time, because no one ever cared about Paint 3D. Microsoft wanted this to actually replace Paint altogether back in 2017, but it just didn't stick. The interface was far more convoluted, and yes, 3D printing and design have become far more mainstream, but it still hasn't grown past a somewhat expensive hobby for most people, and the learning curve for 3D content creation is far bigger than the simple and intuitive concept of 2D images.
The writing was on the wall for Paint 3D when Windows 11 came around and the Paint app got a full redesign and just kept adding new features, including a lot of AI stuff as I just mentioned above. That being said, I do think a time will come when a concept like Paint 3D makes sense. I just think Microsoft was a little too early with this, and the app didn't do enough to make 3D truly accessible to everyone.
Either way, Paint 3D is only half gone for now, and I don't think anyone will really miss it even when it fully disappears.
Wrapping up
Overall, I think this was a good week for Windows news. The improvements to Windows on Arm alone are incredibly exciting to me, and I can't wait to see this platform evolve more and more and gain more of a foothold in the market at large.
And as much as I can criticize the fact that the new AI features aren't leveraging Copilot+ PCs, at least they're being added in some capacity, and it's nice to see the Paint app gain some more capabilities. Hopefully, next week brings us more good news to talk about. We'll be back here to go over the good and the bad ocne again.