Microsoft Kills Its Cache App and Service

Microsoft Kills Its Cache App and Service

After a brief moment in the sun, Cache is no more: Today, Microsoft killed off its Cache app and service.

“Moving forward, we won’t develop Cache as a stand-alone product anymore, and we will shut down the Cache service on the 28th of February, 2017,” an email notification from Microsoft explains.

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Why Microsoft killed Cache is unclear, and there are vague hints in the message that Cache functionality may live on in other Microsoft products or services. Perhaps even Windows.

“Last year, we set off on a mission to build the simplest way for people to organize their digital stuff around the things important to them, and evolved the OneClip app to Cache,” the message notes. “We launched through The Microsoft Garage to bring Cache to you and learn from your feedback.”

“Over the course of this year, we learned that there was an appetite for a service like Cache, but more importantly, your feedback taught us a lot about the extent of the challenges people have with managing and organizing their work.”

We’ve actually written about Cache quite a bit here on Thurrott.com.Brad noted in August 2016 that it was essentially “an Internet clipboard for everything.” In October, Rafael did the first hands-on exploration of the app. I also looked at Cache, in December, and reported on its official description, “a visual bookmarking tool” that works cross platform and “allows you to drag text snippets, images, web pages, files, URLs, notes and nearly anything else you might need into the app and then instantly have it available on your iPhone.”

Microsoft says that all Garage projects are experiments by definition and that its experience with this app and service have left it “better equipped to tackle our original mission to help people easily organize their stuff.”

I guess we’ll see how that goes.

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Conversation 18 comments

  • 265

    Premium Member
    19 January, 2017 - 4:38 pm

    <p>I thought it showed real promise and the Garage response to feedback indicated genuine interest from the Garage. &nbsp;I wanted to use it to draw different elements (text, links, images, graphs — not really audio or video) from various sources (web pages, emails, word docs, spreadsheets) into a single document or file. &nbsp;And I wanted to be able to "bank" some copies and be able to easily and repeatedly plug them in as needed. &nbsp;I valued these capabilities more than the ability to drag and drop everything. &nbsp;I hope they are bringing the Cache team back "in-house" as part of an effort to bring Cache-like capabilities right into the OS. &nbsp;</p>

    • 5664

      Premium Member
      19 January, 2017 - 7:15 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#37796">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/mmcpher">mmcpher</a><a href="#37796">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>We had that in the 90s. It was called OpenDoc and it went full-tilt nowhere, then disappeared over a cliff in Mac OS 8.6.&nbsp;</p>

  • 2603

    Premium Member
    19 January, 2017 - 4:42 pm

    <p>SwiftKey added a similar feature this week.</p>
    <p>It only works on one device, at the moment, but it would be easy to extend via the swiftkey account.&nbsp;</p>

  • 5394

    19 January, 2017 - 5:57 pm

    <p>The features should be part of OneNote. I already have my info in OneNote.</p>

    • 214

      Premium Member
      21 January, 2017 - 10:05 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#37816">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/glenn8878">glenn8878</a><a href="#37816">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>Agreed.</p>
      <p>Along with that I want One-Note&nbsp;it to be self-indexing to categorize and organize based on&nbsp;language recognition technology.</p>

  • 5767

    19 January, 2017 - 6:11 pm

    <p>The basic problem is people are not willing to try out new Microsoft apps. They use the old ones – Office(mainly) because they grew up with it and it’s the gold standard. But with everything mobile, people have moved on to Apple, Google, Dropbox, etc…</p>

  • 2851

    19 January, 2017 - 7:55 pm

    <p>You mean Microsoft Garage actually wrote a Windows app rather than simply another iOS/Lagdroid app ?</p>

  • 289

    Premium Member
    19 January, 2017 - 10:17 pm

    <p>"…your feedback taught us a lot about the extent of the challenges people have with managing and organizing their work."</p>
    <p>We have decided we are not up to those challenges.&nbsp;</p>

  • 600

    Premium Member
    19 January, 2017 - 10:50 pm

    <p>I’ve gotten a little too attached to Cache, now I have to rethink my workflow. Really liked it for keeping track of Code and SQL that I was working on.&nbsp;</p>
    <p>I will either go back to Notepad, or maybe OneNote</p>

  • 5615

    20 January, 2017 - 4:55 am

    <blockquote><em><a href="#37816">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/glenn8878">glenn8878</a><a href="#37816">:</a></em></blockquote>
    <p>As I was reading this, "…works cross platform and &ldquo;allows you to drag text snippets, images, web pages, files, URLs, notes and nearly anything else you might need into the app and then instantly have it available on your…," my first thought was "sounds like what I already do with OneNote."</p>

  • 5615

    20 January, 2017 - 4:59 am

    <blockquote><em><a href="#37848">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/Chris_Kez">Chris_Kez</a><a href="#37848">:</a></em></blockquote>
    <p>Ha! Blunt, but probably accurate.</p>

  • 5234

    20 January, 2017 - 9:17 am

    <p>Microsoft loses Cache.</p>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
    <p>They’re making up for it through ads in Windows 10.</p>

  • 6359

    20 January, 2017 - 9:32 am

    <p>"Microsoft says that all Garage projects are experiments by definition"</p>
    <p>Microsoft is undependable.</p>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>

  • 5496

    20 January, 2017 - 9:42 am

    <p>You can do the exact same in OneNote.</p>

  • 145

    Premium Member
    20 January, 2017 - 3:55 pm

    <p>Based on what I’ve seen with the new Cortana experience in 15014, where I can open a web page between my Surface Pro 3, my work SP4, and my old desktop, without missing a beat, I would say they are more likely to incorporate this functionality into Cortana to try and drive eyes to Cortana over building a separate app, or extend One Note in some way.</p>
    <p>Would make sense, if you can get Cortana on as many Android and iPhones as possible, because people want this kind of capability, why not? Not sure it’s the best idea, but I can see why it would be appealing to Microsoft.</p>

  • 5520

    20 January, 2017 - 5:54 pm

    <blockquote><em>could it just be that the guy in the Garage who was working on cache has simply left MS?</em></blockquote>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>

  • 5194

    27 January, 2017 - 5:02 pm

    <p>reading Rafael’s Hands on with Cache.&nbsp; The first comment:<br />Waethorn Alpha Member #2235 – 3 months ago <br />I can only imagine that they’ll kill off this app and the functionality will be subsumed into OneNote. &nbsp;But as is always in true Microsoft fashion, not all of it.</p>

  • 10649

    07 February, 2017 - 9:50 am

    <p>Cache app service very important for any app to work properly. Microsoft doing some experiments&nbsp;nowadays. App stores like Vshare offers much more flexible service in terms of service. All the apps on Vshare are for free with more cache support and great functionality. Get it from <a href="http://vshareappmarket.com">here</a&gt;.</p>

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