Sketchpad has completely disappeared from Ink Workspace

Good god, how far can a company be removed from its customers? Why would you replace a perfectly good and useful app? If you want people to use your whiteboard, which is btw much worse than the sketchpad, give people a choice. The loading time alone is a no-go imo.

Bad design decisions will cost you the lead you currently aquired compared to other operating systems. We don't appreciate you just taking stuff from us we like and enjoy!

BRING BACK THE SKETCHPAD!

PS: I just used your whiteboard and I honestly can only assume you're playing on us. It's a joke is what it is.

Indeed; when friends with kids came over inevitably I had to surrender my Surface to them for doodling. It's especially amazing that neither they nor I (an adult doodling for an engineering job) have any feature requests of Sketchpad. It was a perfect tool. Even Microsoft Paint, which has had decades of tinkering, has never achieved a similar level of perfection.

I am logging in to these forums for the *first time*, JUST to comment on this issue.

(TLDR; BRING BACK SKETCHPAD! My 4 year old daughter and I used it on the couch everyday after work on my Surface Book2, and no other apps come close to Sketchpad in responsiveness, simplicity, usability, pen-support, and intuitiveness: not even the Premium apps like Adobe Fresco, I know because I have tried them all, in a father's desperate attempt to re-kindle the quality time with his daughter, who now gets too frustrated trying to doodle in the more "professional" apps. )

I moved after a decade of Powerbook/MacBooks to Thinkpad, Surface Laptop and Surface Book2 13" about a year ago (when the recent dictatorial Macbook changes pushed me away) . I have been massively impressed with the way Windows 10 has caught up to OSX in usability. The thoughtfulness and ergonomics of the Surface line has surpassed Apple in my opinion...

Windows 10 now knows how to "get out of your way" and allows you get into a "flow" much the way OSX/iOS used to.

OR SO I THOUGHT!!! The disappearance of Ink Workspace in favor of Microsoft Whiteboard was a *jarring* reminder that the old autocratic tendencies (that made me flee to Apple and Linux) are still echoing in the DNA of Microsoft UX.

For the last six months I have enjoyed double-tapping the eraser of my Microsoft Pen to quickly annotate screenshots (replacing Apple's "CMD⌘-SHIFT-3" in my muscle-memory)....

After a day full of of using that to effectively communicate with co-workers, I have most recently enjoyed relaxing on the couch in the evening doodling on the Surface Book2 with my 4 year old daughter. I could hand the pen to my 4 year old daughter who knew that single clicking the eraser would bring up her last doodle even if it was days since we'd last worked on one together....She'd knew the Sketchpad UI instinctively: switching colors, stroke thickness, and flipping the pen over to to erase lines...it was intuitive for a child, which is the hallmark of brilliant UX design...

BUT NO MORE! Now I'm needing to hackily keep my system-updates INTENTIONALLY deprecated so that I can continue to have the quality time with my daughter on the couch with my Surface Book2 13" and Sketchpad. We all know that Windows is janky (at best) when the updates get cumulatively behind.

SO, I BEG YOU PLEASE BRING BACK SKETCHPAD!!!...These moments with kids are already fragile and fleeting, especially as they grow and evolve...I dont need my computer to be YET ANOTHER independent variable.  No other sketch app for Win10 is nearly as fast & responsive yet intuitive (while also supporting tilt, pressure sensitivity, and palm rejection).... I know because I bought them all in a desperate attempt to entice my daughter back to the doodle-sessions....For now, she wants nothing to do with it since (in her words) "these ones are too hard to use daddy".

I do agree that SketchPad should be still a choice.  Needing to logon to MS Account is foolish. As I think a teacher noted above, this may not even be possible in schools.  Installing new software is also difficult in institutional or business settings.  Microsoft, and many software manufacturers, fail to understand this.

Thank you.  I'm testing the Autodesk Sketchbook.

You might want to try MyPaint http://mypaint.org/about/

I used this on a Mac a while back and it was pretty good.

Then I've been using StylusLabs Write http://www.styluslabs.com/ on an Android for years and recently when I got the Surface Pro I started using the Windows version.  It is called a "word processor for handwriting" but if you have a page without lines it is pretty much like Sketchpad.

The problem with both these programs is that I need our corporate IT overlords to allow their use.  Sketchpad was included in the OS so it was already there.  It would have been so much easier if they hadn't screwed with a good thing.