, evildictaitor wrote

*snip*

Renaming != killing.

*snip*

New names for stuff:

Service

Windows 8

Windows Phone

Web/HTML 5

(live.com)

API (dev. 
live.com)

Earlier Versions

Account

Microsoft account

Microsoft account

Account.live.com

OAUTH

Windows Live ID, Passport

Storage/ 
Docs

SkyDrive app, SkyDrive Desktop

SkyDrive app, Office app

SkyDrive.com

REST, JSON

FolderShare, Live Mesh, Windows Live Mesh

Email

Mail app

Mail app

Hotmail.com

EAS

Windows Live Mail, Outlook Express

Calendar

Calendar app

Calendar app

Calendar.live.com

EAS, REST

Windows Live Mail, Windows Calendar

Contacts

People app

People app

People.live.com

EAS, REST

Windows Contacts

Messaging

Messaging app

Messaging app

Integrated in Hotmail and SkyDrive

XMPP

MSN Messenger

Photos/ Videos

Photos app, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker

Photos app, Camera Roll

Photos.live.com

REST, JSON (via SkyDrive)

Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Movie Maker


Many of these services existed before and outside of live (LiveID/Accout = .netPassport; WL Hotmail = MSN Hotmail; Contacts = MSN Messenger integrated with Outlook Express' address book; Messaging = MSN Messenger). Windows Live is only the branding. I never intended to suggest Microsoft was killing (all) the services. (Although I found an enjoyable irony in using the term "Death" in this case...)

The fact is they ARE killing the Live brand. It's a substantial shift in concept - the purpose of the original Windows Live applications (later "Windows Live Essentials") was specifically to remove features such as email client, messaging client etc. out of the OS. Tying these back in with the OS is a paradigm shift significant enough to be considered the death of the concept of Windows Live.

I'm not even suggesting this must be a bad thing if Microsoft do it right this time. It would be a bad thing if they'd done Windows Live right, but they never did. 

 

, Blue Ink wrote

*snip*

From the original article on the Building Windows 8 blog:

"For customers who use Windows 7, we have a set of Windows desktop apps, including Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, Messenger, Family Safety, and our recently released SkyDrive for the Windows desktop."

Doesn't sound like they plan to move everybody to a web interface.

"Our current platform is currently current". That's all that can be inferred from the above. Of course the applications won't stop working just because Microsoft stops supporting them. It doesn't mean they haven't essentially discontinued WL essentials (the new Windows 8 apps are a part of Windows and, from what I gather, not on feature parity with their predecessors).