We told you just yesterday Windows 11 24H2 is now available to insiders in the preview channel. This means that although we still have a few months to wait for its release (which will be after the summer), all the new features and changes should already be nicely polished, so these months are the time to work on stability and reliability to try and ensure that from day one it worked as required.

We already told you in yesterday’s publication the main new features you’ll find in Windows 11 24H2, some of which we’ve told you about before, such as the long-awaited arrival of sudo, Wi-Fi 7 compatibility, and improved compression format support, among others. So we’re not talking about a huge update like others we’ve seen in the past (especially before Microsoft started using the so-called Moments), but it’s a positive read and we can expect a more polished and reliable update.

Now, not everything will be new in this update because, as we already announced yesterday and read in Bleeping Computer, con Windows 11 24H2 Microsoft will finish removing Cortana and WordPad. Two expected moves, but one that provokes very different reactions among Windows users. So much so that although I say they were expected, there was actually only one of them, because for the average user in another example of the Mandela Effect, the other one had already occurred.

I’ll start with the latter, which of course it is removing Cortana. Let us remind you that the decline of Microsoft’s virtual assistant began already in 2019, first with the elimination of its application for Android and iOS and shortly after its departure from the main panel of Windows 10. Since then, slowly but inexorably, we too have experienced our downfall, which was sealed last year. However, and although it is no longer functional, the application remained on systems that installed it at the time. This will end with the arrival of Windows 11 24H2, as the update will remove the app from those systems where it is still installed. Fade to white for a feature that at the time, in Satya Nadella’s words, aimed to take out web browsers.

Different, very different is the case of WordPad, an application that has accompanied Windows since its inception (as Write until Windows 95, when it changed its name to its current name). And no, it’s not a surprise, because Microsoft brought it last year, and at the beginning of 2024, we already saw it start to disappear in development versions of Windows. I say it’s different because, unlike Cortana, WordPad was a very useful app, and if the people of Redmond had cared a little more about it, it would still be fully valid today.