“With the release of Windows 10 21H2, Windows offers inbox support for Mopria compliant printer devices over network and USB interfaces via the Microsoft IPP Class Driver. This removes the need for print device manufacturers to provide their own installers, drivers, utilities, and so on. Device experience customization is now available via the Print Support Apps that are distributed and automatically installed via the Windows Store,” the company wrote.
If they were just drivers, I’d agree with you. I was looking into the Lexmark and HP continuous ink services recently, and one of them, Lexmark I think, wanted the ability to update the firmware in your printer to stop you from being able to use third party inks or toners.
Along with that, I’ve had issues in the past where a faulty driver crashed the Windows Update service. Trying to update the driver through Windows would take me to Windows Update to install the missing update before it would let me update the driver. If I couldn’t get the driver from the manufacturer’s website, I would have been stuck.
And having drivers in windows update has 0 effect on drivers being available from manufacturers directly, as evidenced by your comment. So I don’t really see how that could be construed as a negative.
If Windows is dropping support for the third party drivers, why would the manufacturers bother making two sets. They would most likely just make the Store drivers with everything built in. I might be wrong, but the choice to update drivers through Windows Update isn’t granular, so if you want to update any of your drivers that way, you have to update them all.
If Lexmark, or any other manufacturer, decide to put their firmware updates in the drivers, you won’t see it when it updates through Windows, and even if you do, you’ll have to turn off driver updates for everything else to stop them.