Unsurprisingly, this change has not been met with a lot of enthusiasm by the average Windows user, and with Microsoft now officially recommending users migrate over to the Settings app, it seems that before long we may have to say farewell to what used to be an intrinsic part of the Windows operating system since its first iterations. Yet bizarrely, much of the Control Panel functionality doesn’t exist yet in the Settings app, and it remain an open question how much of it can be translated into the Settings app user experience (UX) paradigm at all.
Considering how unusual this kind of control panel used to be beyond quaint touch-centric platforms like Android and iOS, what is Microsoft’s goal here? Have discovered a UX secret that has eluded every other OS developer?
↫ Maya Posch
I like the Windows Control Panel, and approaches like it. They’re easy to use, they allow you to have multiple settings panels open at the same time, they can be easily extended by third parties – for better or worse – and they make it easy to find things with colourful, recognisable icons. The current Windows Settings application is a massive regression, as is the change from macOS’ iconic and incredibly user-friendly System Preferences to the new System Settings application. KDE also moved to a sidebar design I’m not a fan of, and GNOME has had a similar unpleasant, monochrome sidebar, too.
It’s not big enough of an issue to make a huge deal out of, and the KDE sidebar settings application is at least marginally usable, but I really do wish someone would have the guts to undo this general trend, because it’s getting harder and harder to find the settings I want at a glance, and not allowing you to open multiple settings panels at the same time is a huge loss.
And a small note: this article uses the Windows 3.x Control Panel as its starting point, but both Windows 1.x and 2.x had a Control Panel as well. It’s an old concept, for sure.
Making settings harder to change means people won’t change them.
If people don’t change settings, they’re left as the default
If they’re left as the default, then they’re usually left in a state that is proven to work and be well supported.
If the app works as designs because the settings are on default, there’s less support calls
If there’s less support calls, Microsoft can cut support jobs.
If Microsoft cut support jobs, there’s more profit for shareholders
The123king,
I see the logic there. The exact same logic supports culling those code paths from windows altogether, not just the control panel settings for them. It’s Henry Ford’s “Just one flavor of ice cream” policy, if you pardon my analogy butchering 🙂 . This would be ok if that’s what users are expecting. But wasn’t it a point of pride among windows fans to point out how windows control panel GUIs were better than the unix way of editing config files and having to use the command line? Killing off the control panel widgets without functional GUI replacements will leave users reliant on hacking the registry by hand, which IMHO would be considered regressive for windows.
Just take my recent experience of trying to remove unwanted online crap from spamming the windows 11 start menu, I found it insulting that I had to go into the registry to do it and this couldn’t be done in the windows GUI.
And it will have the added “benefit” of people being less likely to change all the telemetry&advertisement settings.
On a side note: if microsoft wants to cut support jobs, they’ll do it regardless of whether those people are needed or not, just like they did when they cut the qa department.
Some time ago I wanted to set a fixed ip address in my laptop because of port forwading. For reason unknown to me the settings app couldn’t do it so I used the “old and archaic” control panel without an issue. Funnily enough the settings app thinks I am using DHCP.
The network settings portion of the settings app is particularly annoying to use though they’ve finally removed some of the non functional redundant sub menu sections. Unless I am missing it there’s still no way to set advanced adapter settings, select protocols, tag a VLAN, etc.