haha, after using OS X since the beginning, i have never even looked for this. after the first time of realizing it was rich text like WordPad and not a text editor Notepad, I never even attempted to use it for anything text related. better app options were available for pure text anyways. BBEdit was my gold standard in the way back days.
I think both sound equally valid. One sort of expands to "a GUI editor for plain text" in my mind and the other is more like "a plain text editor with a GUI."
I too have been annoyed to not have a simple bundled paint program (I remmeber MacPaint!), but bundled application software is not really what determines whether an OS is a decent desktop OS.
I actually strongly disagree. Bundled applications which I don’t use and/or will replace with more powerful third party options just add clutter. There’s a balance to be sure, but I generally think OS’s bundle too many apps!
Why would the quality of an OS be determined by what apps come bundled with it? An OS is a different thing than applications, it's what the applications run on. I think you have an unusual viewpoint.
Because people generally want their computer to be usable when they buy it. Imagine if OSes did not include a text editor, browser, file explorer, settings app, wifi connection tool, etc. MS paint is similarly a very basic part of the standard toolset.
One of the big reasons I switched in 2007 was the absence of absolute dreck like Paint.exe on a Mac. Instead, Apple focused on providing other types of apps for free, and now macOS comes with a full office suite and a prosumer sound editing program as things Windows doesn't have on first launch. Out of the box, macOS offers so much stuff today it's kind of incredible.
You want to draw? Use Notes, which has very little but enough to draw a quick idea you just had.
mspaint.exe is as close to a perfect software as I have ever seen. I'm curious to know which program you think is better, because I'm sure very few exist.
You can’t really start with a blank canvas and fill it in. You can only edit an existing image. (Yes, if you can create an all white JPEG you’ve more or less reinvented paint.)
It can sort of hackily fill some extremely extremely basic functions (I know cause I do it too), but even that is pretty hacky, like how do you create a new blank document 800px by 600px to start painting on?
oh come on, how much more do you need than a crayon based color picker? ever set the date of your system to waaay into the future and then look at the crayon color picker? after providing that, what else could you possibly need?
just like a box of crayons. when they are new, all of the lables are crisp and clean, and the edges of the crayons are square/flat. after using the crayons, the tips become rounded, and you have to peel the labels back as the crayon wears down.
so does the crayon color picker. at least it did in older versions of the OS. haven't looked at it in a reallly long time, as it was def a gimmick more than function
