Sketchpad has completely disappeared from Ink Workspace

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".

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.

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.

Hear! Hear!

You can't use Whiteboard without an internet connection!? Even if you try to use it "locally" (fully accepting that there will be no cloud-saves/backups), it STILL nags you every ~60 seconds that "YOU CANT DO THAT WITHOUT AN INTERNET CONNECTION"

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A few days after my initial post here, I set a "restore point", disabled the blocks that kept my Surface Book 2 out-of-date, fully updated, and gave Microsoft Whiteboard an honest try. And after a month of using it, I can even more confidently say that IT IS TERRIBLE! and I will again repeat my plea to PLEASE BRING BACK SKETCHPAD!

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During an offline work session today, I discovered that you actually need an internet connection to even just use Whiteboard!? 

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Apparently, my Surface Book 2 is a "thin client". My mistake, I thought I was buying a standalone PC: one that was capable of operating independently....that didn't require me to time-share on the Microsoft Mainframes....it's funny how we have built all this wonderfully mobile technology to power our newfangled "distributed" lifestyles only to accidentally regress back to what amounts to effectively being "dumb terminals", "TTYs", and "Server/Mainframes".

This is SUPREMELY stupid. 

I fully recognize that the relentless consumption-obsessed deluge of "always connected", just-in-time-shipped, "freemium", influencer-based, Software-as-a-service, gig-economy, "streaming only", DRM'd, rentals-beat-ownership, "savings accounts are for boomers",  instant-gratification culture has us drowning in stuff like "snackable content", forced-software-updates, and "modal dialogs" to such an extent that the average 20-something has no conceptualization of where the internet ends and "local software" begins...but, for those of us old enough to remember, we are forced to stand idly by and wonder: "IS NOTHING SACRED!?"

I've long-since accepted that every app on my phone is just a "web-view" powered by steady streams of REST API requests to an ungodly number of ever-watching internet services...but do the apps on my desktop need to be also? Phones are consumption devices. Computers are creation devices.

Maybe I'm a dinosaur in my mid-thirties, but sometimes creatives and coders need to.... *gasp*.... turn off the internet and focus on CREATING..... like in a darkroom... or in an art studio.... or in a laboratory... or in a recording booth ....or in a library.... or in a study....

Away from the internet.

Away from distractions.

HOW CAN YOU EXPECT US TO TAKE YOUR TOOLS WITH US TO OUR QUIET SPACES IF YOUR TOOLS FORCE US TO KEEP OUR EAR TO THE MEGAPHONE?

You can do better Microsoft. restore Sketchpad.