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Microsoft is Updating Windows Notepad Application For the First Time in Years (theverge.com)
Microsoft is giving its Notepad app for Windows a surprising amount of new features. From a report: You'll soon be able to do wrap around find and replace alongside the ability to zoom into text by holding down the ctrl key and using the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Microsoft is also adding in extended line ending support so that Unix/Linux line endings (LF) and Macintosh line endings (CR) are supported in Notepad. The status bar will now be enabled by default in Notepad, and it includes the ability to display line and column numbers when word-wrap is enabled.
jumping from 1991 to 2002 in a single version update
Does anyone at Microsoft understand that Macintosh line endings haven't been CR for over 15 years? Macintosh is now Unix. Has been since 2001. Please inform the Excel team too.
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Notepad is probably one of very few apps that is used constantly, in the manner you described. It's familiar, quick, convienent and in many cases totally sufficient for the things you use it for. This hasn't gone unnoticed by Microsoft.
All the telemetry collected by Windows is telling them there's an application that they haven't properly monetized. There are ads in Minesweeper and Solitaire, but Notepad is far more useful and you spend more time looking at it. And they know. The telemetry tells them what apps are running and for how long.
They are 'updating' the Notepad application to include hooks to their advertising framework. It's no use displaying ads in places people aren't looking, and you're looking at Notepad. And they know, and soon you'll be looking at advertisments, jammed into whatever "helpful" widget is added to "help" you. Because it looks like you need help, and you're going to get it, whether you like it or not.