For fans of calendar app Sunrise, there's good news and bad news. The good news is Microsoft is putting its multimillion dollar acquisition to good use to make the calendar better in Outlook. The bad news is the company is sunsetting Sunrise.
The company will eventually discontinue Sunrise after Outlook fully absorbs all of the calendar's existing feature, Microsoft's Outlook chief revealed Wednesday.
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Javier Soltero, who joined Microsoft when the company acquired his email app Acompli, which became the basis for the current Outlook app, didn't say when the transition would happen but said Outlook's calendar would be steadily gaining new features during the next few months.
"You’ll see richer calendar experiences come to Outlook from Sunrise—including Interesting Calendars and connections to your favorite apps and services," Soltero wrote in a blog post Wednesday. "You will also see improvements to Outlook’s ability to create meetings while on the go and handle meetings across time zones."
Once these features are "fully integrated into Outlook," he says, Sunrise as a standalone calendar app will be discontinued.
Though not totally surprising -- Microsoft discontinued Acompli when it launched the new Outlook app at the beginning of the year -- the move will likely be disappointing to many Sunrise fans.
The influence of the Sunrise team on Outlook is already clear -- the news of Sunrise's imminent demise was delivered alongside a refresh of Outlook's iOS and Android apps, including updated in-app calendars. The calendar in the Android app sports a redesigned agenda view while the iOS app has deign tweaks to make it easier to view information about upcoming events.