Only for a small subset of operations, like Blitting - everything else (like 2D accelerated line and shape drawing) was made slower. I understand the business

Only for a small subset of operations, like Blitting - everything else (like 2D accelerated line and shape drawing) was made slower. I understand the business and technical reasons for doing this - but Microsoft never replaced GDI with an _approachable_ replacement. Direct2D is nice, but it's very difficult to use from the .NET world, whereas GDI is a first-class library feature in `System.Drawing`.