When Microsoft acquired Sunrise Calendar, a calendar management system which integrates Google Calendar, iCal, and Exchange amongst others, their original plan was to take the system and integrate it into Outlook. This would prove to be better at cross platform support and ultimately make the switch from a separate ecosystem to Windows easier. And it looks like the company is really charging for this goal now, because they announced that as of August 31st, Sunrise Calendar would no longer be functional as a standalone app.
As some of you might already know, we were acquired by Microsoft last year and have now moved on to work on Outlook for iOS and Android. Different products, same goal: making your day-to-day life easier and more enjoyable to manage.
The entire Sunrise team is now working side-by-side with the Outlook team and it’s a thrilling moment for us to work on an app of this scale. Unfortunately, as all good stories go, there’s a sad bit to it: we’re not able to support and update Sunrise anymore. No new features. No bug fixes. For us, that’s the definition of a lousy app and it’s not a user experience we want to leave you with. For this reason, we’ll be removing Sunrise from the app stores in the next few days. On August 31st, we’ll officially shut down the app and it will stop working all together.
It may not seem like it from the heartfelt message above, but this new change is a good thing. This means that the entire Sunrise team will be able to work with the Outlook team to better integrate the app into Microsoft’s system. Personally, I don’t mind the fact that it’s being shut down for that reason.
As heartbreaking as this sounds, we’re hard at work bringing the magic of Sunrise to the Outlook apps, with all your most loved features – interesting calendars, event icons and calendar apps. We’re confident you’ll be able to find our special touch there too.
Let’s now dwell on this sadness, however. Think about what Sunrise Calendar will become thanks to more focus on the Outlook end of the spectrum. Some of you may be disappointed by this and never change your mind, but at least Sunrise isn’t going away forever.
Source: blog.sunrise.am via The Verge
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