Microsoft has not retired classic Windows Autopilot, and nothing in the documentation behind this post carries an end-of-life date for it. What the September Intune Customer Success post did say is that device preparation is now the recommended path for user-driven Entra join and that future engineering investment goes there. That is a direction, not a deadline, and it matters because the transition costs money before any deadline appears: every new Windows 11 device provisioned the old way is another one to migrate later, Windows 10 and hybrid-joined fleets have no device preparation path at all, and pre-association only converts devices at their next natural reset. Start with the population that qualifies rather than the whole estate.
