I ask because the recent evidence says yes. It looks like they’ve stopped developing the desktop app and are working solely on the new (and for my purposes, still inferior) Windows 10 version.

For example, from a Microsoft employee on Reddit 11 months ago:

As we pivot to a more modern code base, we’re prioritizing Windows 10's capabilities to let us ship faster, build things more easily, and create deeper integrations into the operating system, such as the ability to launch OneNote above lock on Surface with the click of a pen. We recently added new ink features to the Windows 10 app and made it much simpler to use. We hope these will delight our users, even those who previously embraced the desktop app. ...

In listening to user feedback, we found that even though the Win32 version of OneNote is incredibly powerful, many users - and new users in particular - found it difficult to use. So our goal for the Windows 10 app is to bring in the most valuable features from the classic OneNote app while delivering a more simple and pleasant user experience for users overall.

Many of the top features in OneNote 2016 will be added to OneNote over time. For a full comparison of the two apps, check out this article: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-s-the-difference-between-OneNote-and-OneNote-2016-a624e692-b78b-4c09-b07f-46181958118f

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50o5is/we_are_the_microsoft_onenote_team_ama/

Still more proof the original desktop version has been abandoned, from the Office Support website:

The OneNote app for Windows 10 and the OneNote 2016 desktop version are very similar, but there are a few key differences. *OneNote for Windows 10 is easy to use and it’s regularly updated with new features. OneNote 2016, on the other hand, includes some classic features that existing users may prefer. Many of the top features in OneNote 2016 will be added to OneNote over time.*

The app you choose depends on the type of user you are. If you need a feature that’s only available in OneNote 2016, feel free to use that version. OneNote for Windows 10, however, includes many exciting new features that you won’t find anywhere else, and it’s also simpler and easier to use.

Source: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-s-the-difference-between-OneNote-and-OneNote-2016-a624e692-b78b-4c09-b07f-46181958118f?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1

Strange. I am now wondering where the mac Onenote belongs.

I sometimes open Windows 10: I never noticed the new app. The new one doesn't support harndwriting...hmm.

What an interesting development. Grrr, Microsoft are SO annoying! I hope they don't do to OneNote what they did to Wunderlist. They showed VERY poor judgment there.

The Windows 10 version *does* support handwriting -- it doesn't support converting handwriting to text.

Many of the features of OneNote Windows 10 version are MS's attempts to be competitive with iOS 11 features for iPads -- so to me it seems MS is positioning themselves for the tablet market.

It's interesting that OneNote Mac, part of Office 365, is increasing like OneNote 2016 on Windows.

Dellu wrote:

Strange. I am now wondering where the mac Onenote belongs.

I sometimes open Windows 10: I never noticed the new app. The new one
doesn't support harndwriting...hmm.

Yes.

I'm adding more Doom and Gloom:

Microsoft is doomed!

At least it is for me. I thought after removing mobile first they got back to improve my workstation desktop. But now all they want do is cloud and i'm not following here either. And when i see what nice features MacOS is shipping now with natural language processing etc. all of them local i can only cry how much of a cluster fuck developing modern apps is with the terrible MS systems.

If you don't like cloud-centric computing in Windows you won't like it in macOS either. In iOS 11 and High Sierra iCloud will be more pervasive than ever.

Hm, I'm not so sure. I get the impression that Microsoft really have gone all-in for the Totally Cloud-Enabled approach to pretty much everything. Whereas on the Mac, there is still a fairly clear differentiation between apps that do use iCloud and apps that don't. I agree that the number of apps that do is steadily increasing, however.

On the other hand, this integration is one of the strongest things about the Apple platform. And it runs much more smoothly than Microsoft's equivalent services. The ease with which you can transfer stuff from one device to another in Apple World is truly astounding, and iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra promise to further improve this ease of exchange.

Just to give non-Mac users an idea: I have three Macs, an iPad Mini and a couple of iPhones (one for international use). They all talk to each other, and I can make calls and even FaceTime calls from a Mac just as easily as I can make them from one of the iPhones. Messages all pop up on various devices (I know some people find this irritating - personally, I love it) so I can respond to people from any device (if I feel like it; I continue to resist this Gen Z affliction whereby people appear to believe that if they don't *immediately* respond to every single message either they will vanish in a puff of social irrelevance or their unfortunate correspondent will have a nervous breakdown). The best iCloud apps sync immediately, with very little delay (ironically, Apple's iWork apps are the slowest here, although the built-in apps like Notes, Contacts, Calendar etc. are pretty much instantaneous), and the best developers (Bear, Readdle, Glam) are already making the most of this speed. Those Mac/iOS users who are more social media-focused than I am (my daughter springs to mind) use their devices to post up annotated photos and other clever little constructions in a matter of seconds, transferring them between multiple social media platforms. In this sense, computing with Apple is genuinely fast, fun and (almost) seamless. I've had wonderful moments with Microsoft machines that have been almost as good - and truly ghastly moments when nothing seems to talk to anything. Now, my occasional dabbling with Windows 10 is becoming more and more sporadic - there really isn't any comparison, no matter how much Microsoft may insist there is.

I should stress that I'm deeply suspicious of the motives of all these computing giants and have no particular cognitive bias - i.e. I don't believe Apple is "wonderful" simply because they're Apple or because Steve Jobs is somehow mythic. But I am impressed when a company manages to achieve a tightly integrated ecosphere that actually works. The company that had the greatest opportunity to do so before Apple was Sony, but they blew it, despite their full-spectrum coverage of consumer (and business) electronics. They suffered (still do, I believe) from the silo effect so endemic to large companies; Microsoft did the same until Satya Nadella started dismantling the barriers. All credit to Apple for, on the whole and despite their vast size, managing to avoid this issue (except perhaps in the realm of TV...)

Sorry, just having a philosophical moment there. Back to business...

I agree with everything Bill wrote.

I also think iCloud is far less transparent -- from a "where's my stuff?" perspective -- than it could be. Less than, say, Dropbox or even OneDrive. Getting into the ecosystem Bill delineated is easy. Getting out? Not sure. For documents - developers either make our files obvious on Mac in the iCloud Drive folder, or they shuttle them away into obscurely named and difficult-to-locate folders inside ~/Library or /Library. I'm old-school Boomerish. I want to know where every bit is all the time, and I prefer obvious file hierarchies. That's never been the Windows way, and it's not the OS X / macOS way either. Increasingly so. So in a nutshell that's my beef. I like the features, Handoff, Universal Clipboard, and sync, etc., that Bill describes. I just don't like the secrecy behind it.

Yes, that's an entirely fair point. I'm hoping that the wonders of iCloud will be revealed in all their glory with the advent of the "Files" app to iOS 11 and the opening-up of iCloud to sharing (à la Dropbox) on macOS (High Sierra). Once iCloud is easier to see/deal with, I too will be much happier relying on it!

Cheers,
Bill

Microsoft says definitively in this conference video that there will be no more development of the desktop version. All future development will be the Windows 10 version and its apps for other platforms/devices. What is now OneNote 2016 is the end of the line.

They say they are trying to make Windows 10 as powerful as OneNote 2016 although not all features will be ported over. Windows 10 does have features the desktop app does not (they say they've added more than 100 features to the Windows 10 version in the last year alone)

Simplify and organize with Microsoft OneNote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKo8DhZ054U

There's been a general movement in the direction of attempting to create one OS for desktop and mobile. Apple mentioned a few years ago that this was their aim. They dumbed down all their iworks apps to work on mobile which as a result went from 5 star apps to 1-2 stars now. It seems Microsoft are heading in the same direction. I would imagine only needing to develop one OS for all devices makes financial sense (although I shudder at the prospect of the feature shallowness this will create).

The cloud is also increasingly being baked in. I'm not a fan of this. Apple are extremely poor with what they tell their customers they do. I recently discovered that they actually keep a copy of all your login passwords for all your devices in their cloud whether you use icloud keychain or not. There's no way to opt out. I can understand the convenience of having everything in the cloud, but am far convinced from the wisdom and security of such a move. I recently had a lengthy discussion with 1 Password as they are encouraging everyone to store all their passwords in 1 Passwords new cloud offering. My comment to them was that they are irresponsible and I think you've got to be insane if you do this. Apple have been attempting to stop people jailbreaking their devices for 10 years and still they fail. No system is secure. Everything moving to the cloud by default makes me very uncomfortable. I tend to use a very limited icloud setup and prefer to use other cloud apps such as dropbox so that not all my eggs are in one basket, ie keychain and sensitive info giving apple access to everything.

sorry for the digression!

The cloud is also increasingly being baked in.

In response to a question in that video, they said the Windows 10 version of OneNote will be cloud-based only, with no local version (or "perpetual" version, as the Microsoft presenter labeled it).

This development probably meas an end to third party plug-ins - so I hope Microsoft gets serious about building in capabilities which shoudl have been part of ON long ago.

Mark wrote:

Microsoft says definitively in this conference video that there will be
no more development of the desktop version. All future development will
be the Windows 10 version and its apps for other platforms/devices. What
is now OneNote 2016 is the end of the line.

They say they are trying to make Windows 10 as powerful as OneNote 2016
although not all features will be ported over. Windows 10 does have
features the desktop app does not (they say they've added more than 100
features to the Windows 10 version in the last year alone)

Simplify and organize with Microsoft OneNote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKo8DhZ054U

Mark wrote:

OneNote will be cloud-based only

This is not good. I don't like this movement to the cloud.

I'm forced to use OneNote at work (firm standard for meeting notes).
I saw some good potential in it when it first came out ... then Microsoft stopped improving it a long time ago.

The most striking example that I'm aware of: Microsoft has not added a "replace" command since OneNote came out in 2003.
To illustrate their total disregard for their users, please take a look at the corresponding support note: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Find-and-replace-text-in-notes-34b1f7f8-d327-40c5-8b0c-8419425ed68b

I also use it because it's all I have available to me at work, though I think there's a lot to like about it.

> The most striking example that I’m aware of: Microsoft has not added a “replace” command since OneNote came out in 2003.

Same with the ability to sort pages. Sorting, search and replace and other neglected features are available through marcros (https://getonetastic.com/ and add-ins (https://www.onenotegem.com/ but those will be of no use with a cloud-only OneNote.

I don't have much confidence it's going to be a better application than it is now going this route, but that's their claim.

> OneNote will be cloud-based only


This is not good. I don't like this movement to the cloud.

Well i only hope we have some market competition in the future. A non cloud can soon become a good USP (unique selling point). Begin a small software developer myself i thank Microsoft for leaving the market :-)

Now i hope Evernote joins them with an everything must be stored in the cloud anti-user pattern.

This makes me very sad. I have been using OneNote since 2003. The tablet PC we were testing at the time was a beast but that's another story. I fell in love with OneNote and have been using it ever since as my KM tool. In the last several years, I have been moving all my work from a Windows/PC to the Macintosh platform (I was thrilled when they ported OneNote to the Mac). However, the thrill didn't last for 2 reasons. No storage for local OneNote files and no feature set parity with Windows version. Microsoft has done a hell of a job keeping Mac OneNote up to date but it will always be a 2nd class citizen.

So I am in search of a replacement (I am an info/data/stray tidbits packrat). I tried Evernote for a while but was not enjoying the experience. Right now I have the following products on my short list: Curio, Devon Think Pro and Tinder. It looks like Devon think might be a winner.

Any suggestions? All input welcome!
Thanks,
bb