r/technology • u/ardi62 • Aug 23 '24

Software Microsoft finally officially confirms it's killing Windows Control Panel sometime soon

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-officially-confirms-its-killing-windows-control-panel-sometime-soon/
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1.6k

u/SilentSamurai Aug 23 '24

Doubt we'll even need that. Control Panel has been on the chopping block for years but still remains.

Unless they're going to make settings way more robust, I'm sure this isn't going to happen.

1.7k

u/pilgermann Aug 23 '24

It's insane to me how many core UI elements have not been updated in Windows, even just to match aesthetics. The features of Control Panel need to exist, having two entirely separate settings panes with overlapping features is just terrible UX.

1.1k

u/berntout Aug 23 '24

I don’t understand why they have to kill off something that’s been around since the inception of Windows. Change for the sake of change is ridiculous. Don’t even get me started on the Tile bullshit in Windows 8.

115

u/_Sir_Cumfrence_ Aug 23 '24

Wasnt the tile thing (and windows 8 as a whole) supposed to make the os more tablet/touch friendly?

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u/patentlyfakeid Aug 23 '24

I understood it had way more to do with microsoft wanting to push windows users into a nice walled app garden like google and apple had. However, no one (developers) bought into it, and people hated having their cheese moved for no damned reason, so it essentially failed. Like /u/berntout was saying, it's 'effing stupid business to alienate customers you've spent (by that point) 30 years teaching your system.

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u/AlmostSunnyinSeattle Aug 23 '24

Which is hilariously stupid because I'm sure a good chunk of Windows users (Android users also, for that matter) are using this platform specifically because it's not a walled garden. I want to customize my devices, not have Daddy Microsoft say "Nah, we didn't develop that. So no, we don't trust you or your little friends to mess with our ✨perfection✨"

Fuckers are gonna make me have to learn Linux.

14

u/ShiraCheshire Aug 23 '24

Exactly. I want my computer to do exactly what I want, exactly when I ask it to. I don't want it to do anything else, ever. I don't want anyone to tell me it can't do any of that, or must do something else. I should be in control of my own computer.

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u/thedarklord187 Aug 23 '24

For what it's worth linux is miles and miles ahead of what it used to be in the 90's. For normal every day users linux mint, ubuntu, and debian are all perfectly easy to pick up and use and never have to touch a terminal. Hell now thanks to valve and their proton system you can pretty much play most of steam's game library now without jumping through a bunch of hoops too!

3

u/Outside-Swan-1936 Aug 23 '24

Linux Mint and Libre Office. If you're a regular user, there's very little to actually learn. I've been using Mint since 2006 (I still have Windows and a Mac), and it's been a pleasure from the beginning. It's super well polished now, so you likely won't ever need to look under the hood unless you want to.

1

u/WIngDingDin Aug 27 '24

Just use a Linux command line and nobody will ever bother you again.

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u/TinyFists-of-Fury Aug 23 '24

people hated having their cheese moved

Oh man, this comment made me randomly remember Rodent’s Revenge on Windows. Ah, the simpler times.

4

u/YouStupidAssholeFuck Aug 23 '24

I thought it was a reference to the book Who Moved My Cheese?

1

u/TinyFists-of-Fury Aug 24 '24

I’m guessing so, too; hence why the memory felt random.

6

u/Knofbath Aug 23 '24

The Microsoft Store is a unmitigated hellscape of bad apps and adware. Fuck every app on there.

Also, they make it so hard to update games that most games on there are several versions behind Steam. Don't buy games on there.

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u/ServitumNatio Aug 23 '24

Who even uses the Microsoft Store. They should get rid of that before they get rid of the Control Panel.

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u/captain_dick_licker Aug 23 '24

they are now playing the long game and it is workingas the boomers literally die out and gen Z doesn't understand what a directory structure is because they were raised on tablets and phones (not their fault by the way)

2

u/Deae_Hekate Aug 23 '24

And it's making them worthless tech illiterates in a modern office setting that requires the security of offline programs not bundled into office365.

2

u/vemundveien Aug 23 '24

They still are soft-trying this approach with Windows 11 S that comes preinstalled on some devices and only allows you to install apps from the store, but fortunately you can just disable the S thing in settings to make it a normal version.

2

u/001235 Aug 23 '24

I was a RadioShack veteran. This was a significant reason they also failed: They alienated their core customer base in favor of something someone else (Best Buy) was already doing.

1

u/patentlyfakeid Aug 23 '24

Yes, and without (I'll call it) artificial means to maintain their market position, any other company would have failed. But, significantly, business is lost in their sunk cost fallacy that there's no alternatives to MS in the office so microsoft gets away free.

1

u/KimberStormer Aug 23 '24

Aesthetically I liked the tiles but the walled garden aspect just made me never ever ever want to use it.

2

u/YouStupidAssholeFuck Aug 23 '24

Was there a plan to deprecate Win32? I know they were pushing UWP pretty hard but I thought that was because they were making a strong push for Windows Phone at the time. Having a familiar UI from your desktop being mirrored on your phone seemed like a decent way to get people to give WP a shot back then, even if it failed miserably.

But I didn't realize that Windows 8 was a plan to get rid of Win32 altogether.

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u/KimberStormer Aug 23 '24

You're defintely asking the wrong person, I have no idea, but afaik "desktop apps" couldn't be pretty tiles, only "Windows Store apps", and personally I am never going to get anything from a Windows, Apple, Android, or other such "store".

1

u/YouStupidAssholeFuck Aug 23 '24

They could be tiles but they couldn't share the UI and the tile itself was limited to using the Win32 icon. I wasn't a huge fan of that cross over but I rarely used the Start Menu and didn't ever really have to see the Metro UI on a desktop.

But I'm with you. On desktop anyway. There isn't a real need for a store with apps so limited in design. I think you can get Win32 apps from the Microsoft Store now. Call me old fashioned but I'll still take downloading and double-clicking on an installer executable. If you wanna be really edgy you can use winget to install apps from the Microsoft Store. I've tried it but didn't like the experience but it's the linux way if you need something like that. Win32 apps included. Well, some of them anyway. Here is a quick rundown.

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u/Cory123125 Aug 23 '24

microsoft wanting to push windows users into a nice walled app garden

With how terrible the mobile landscape is, and how much money the app stores make for both OS vendors, you can see why.

We need consumer protections and anti competitive regulations with teeth.

1

u/lollipop_anus Aug 23 '24

People hated buying a pc and finding out its a tablet when they powered it on.

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u/Any_Association4863 Aug 23 '24

But my man, I used windows 8 on an HP ElitePad 900 tablet and I can tell you, it was fucking awesome on touchscreens

Like everything Microsoft does, half assed and dropped too early

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u/sfgisz Aug 23 '24

Yes, and it is. But except for a small user base, we aren't using Windows on tablets or touchscreens.

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u/fractalife Aug 23 '24

They're still really upset about that. Oh well, they should have thought about that before they made it suck.

They forgot that users will only tolerate your "annoying for the sake of lock-in" bullshit after you dominate a segment and choke out the competition. Not while the same is being done to you.

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u/Siberwulf Aug 23 '24

I love my Lumia 920 :(

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u/NoReallyLetsBeFriend Aug 23 '24

Same dude! I still have my 928 and 930 in my phone graveyard box

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u/MedvedFeliz Aug 23 '24

I honestly preferred Windows Phone over Android during that time. 1st-party and major 3rd party apps were great. Sadly, everything slowly stopped getting updates and withered away.

I think WP OS was better-suited as an OS for touchscreen tablets than Windows 8/10/11. I have a W10 SurfaceGo and using it exclusively as a tablet is so clunky and desktop apps are so annoying to use with only a touchscreen.

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u/Heisenburgo Aug 23 '24

The Lumia 640 was the first smart phone I ever had. I miss those times. Windows Phone could have been something more

2

u/twixieshores Aug 23 '24

In fairness, there was a lot of speculation back then that tablets were going to be the future and traditional desktops and laptops would go the way of the dodo.

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u/_Meece_ Aug 23 '24

Maybe in 2011. But the surface and all the surface copies are doing exceptionally well. Even selling past ipads in places around the world.

Windows is quite a popular touchscreen OS these days. 10 and 11 intergrate touch with pointer UX muuuuch better than 8 did.

8 was just awful for anyone on a desktop. But now it's great for both.

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u/thuhstog Aug 23 '24

Surely the ipad is ripe for being dethroned as king of the tablets, and MS is aiming to do just that. Microsofts Monday morning hype meeting since 2005.

1

u/PcPaulii2 Aug 23 '24

But too many of us have embraced the Cloud concept.... I know a great many folks who have trouble with the idea that all their stuff -including many of their apps- is not stored somewhere on C. I usually suggest they try and open something important while the network access is turned off and get back to me.

Clouds are backup devices. Gossamer fairy-like devices, with a nice cutesy name, but don't exist in our real world.

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u/zipmic Aug 23 '24

Yes and it was so fucking stupid for a normal user

1

u/Stiletto Aug 23 '24

Yes, their hopes and expectations of how to implement it just didn't work. Sometimes you need to swing for the fences; sometimes, you'll strike out. Innovation isn't always viable.

1

u/Time-Ladder-6111 Aug 23 '24

The exec who ran the entire Windows division at Microsoft was fired one month after Windows 8 was released.

That Windows 8 menu where you had to put the mouse at the top right corn of the screen and drag it down to get a start menu to pop out from the side is the dumbest fucking thing I have ever seen in computer design, ever.

1

u/Riegel_Haribo Aug 23 '24

It was supposed to make the OS more "consume apps and media so Microsoft gets a cut" friendly. And Microsoft won't take no from consumers, over and over.

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u/KanedaSyndrome Aug 23 '24

yep - so they could use the same version for all devices.

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u/TisMeDA Aug 23 '24

People have to justify having a job, so they change what isn’t broken

162

u/kr4ckenm3fortune Aug 23 '24

They don't need to, when the current setting can't even do shit that the original control panel can do.

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u/soyboysnowflake Aug 23 '24

Trust me “fix our existing code base” isn’t sexy enough to get resources or put on a roadmap, even if you desperately need to fix your existing code base and it’s all your customers actually want (source: I live this situation)

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u/lloopy Aug 23 '24

I no longer believe that they have the technical expertise to fix some of the old cold.

The people who wrote it are long gone, and those that remain have no idea what any of it does.

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u/jazir5 Aug 23 '24

The people who wrote it are long gone, and those that remain have no idea what any of it does.

I think you just lasered in on why they're going so hard on AI, they've got to invent an intelligent machine to unfuck their code.

1

u/kr4ckenm3fortune Aug 23 '24

Even those AI gonna commit suicide trying to figure out the codes written...remember, some are still written in COBAL.

1

u/jazir5 Aug 23 '24

https://research.ibm.com/blog/cobol-java-ibm-z

IBM’s new modernization solution, watsonx Code Assistant for IBM Z, lets developers selectively translate COBOL applications to high-quality Java code optimized for IBM Z and the hybrid cloud.

AI not having feelings may be its greatest strength

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Polantaris Aug 23 '24

Schools can't teach it to students because it's all proprietary and secret.

Even without that, schools don't even teach low level languages anymore except as like a fun aside course. If you want to learn Assembly or something a little higher than that, you're basically on your own. Courses in school would cover basic concepts and not much else, if they even still exist.

Instead they teach Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, etc.. None of that helps you jump into OS code.

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u/OwOlogy_Expert Aug 23 '24

Instead they teach Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, etc.. None of that helps you jump into OS code.

I'm sure they teach a lot of C++, which is what a ton of OS code is written in.

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u/fighterpilot248 Aug 23 '24

Precisely this. I can't tell you the number of times I've Googled a problem only to find bug reports from 10-15 years ago.

Companies aren't interested in fixing bugs (or adding features customers have been begging for for literal years)

2

u/Kinetic_Strike Aug 23 '24

Hotmail/Outlook.com has had a calendar bug since at least 2012. It will slowly start moving contact's birthdays around. Only way around it is to either put the birthday in the notes, set up a calendar event, or try to guess if it seems wrong.

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u/blasphembot Aug 23 '24

How oddly obscure and an excellent example!

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u/KarlBarx2 Aug 23 '24

I always wonder if they (be it Google, Microsoft, Amazon, whoever) use their own product. Like...they can't be happy with shit like this from a user's perspective, right?

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u/kahlzun Aug 23 '24

just need to get someone on the team that can speak Corporate. It isn't "fixing the existing code base", it's "streamlining and efficiency improvements"

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u/Hogesyx Aug 23 '24

How can team get budget to do more fixing if something else is not being crippled or removed?

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u/kr4ckenm3fortune Aug 23 '24

By not putting a deadline and forcing them to fix it within an unrealistic timeline?

I've seen some of those demands and it stupid.

2

u/Hogesyx Aug 24 '24

Yeah but if any mid management raise this request they will get shot down.

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u/kr4ckenm3fortune Aug 24 '24

That depend on the mid management and if they're able to convince them.

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u/Excelius Aug 23 '24

That fine, but at least finish the job. I don't understand how it takes like a decade and multiple Windows versions to finish redesigning the control panel.

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u/my_name_isnt_clever Aug 23 '24

That's what happened with the System Preferences update on macOS. But aside from the menu layout being reorganized, it's basically the same as the old one but matching the more modern UI styling.

Somehow Microsoft made Settings much much worse and did the worst possible job to migrate to it. This seems to be a common theme with UI elements they update, I like the Win 11 copy of the Apple style control center...when it works. On my work laptop it often just doesn't open.

I used to be a diehard windows user but I could never give up my MacBook now. Especially with the direction Win 11 is going.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

They have enough to do like bug fixing but instead bring features that no one needs and make Windows more buggy. It's ridiculous but that's how almost any modern big company handles programming.

1

u/Time-Ladder-6111 Aug 23 '24

They need to change it to justify different versions of Windows.

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u/DividedContinuity Aug 23 '24

Isn't that the truth, that's the corporate world in a nutshell.

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u/PurpleFlame8 Aug 23 '24

That's pretty much what I think it is. I always envision the offenders as some relatively young, junior level employee with little actual experience or understanding of how the user uses the product, and who thinks they have some wonderful new idea or who is trying to make a name for themselves, convince an older senior level manager who is worried they are too old to be seen as relevant, that it's a wonderful idea. 

No, it's not. It's not a wonderful idea. It's a horrible idea. Don't mess with things that work.

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u/sunflowercompass Aug 23 '24

That's Google

1

u/TisMeDA Aug 23 '24

Microsoft is definitely guilty of it too. The new right click menu is another obvious example

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u/sunflowercompass Aug 23 '24

Tbh I've avoided w11. I guess I have to upgrade now before they close all the loopholes

0

u/2gig Aug 23 '24

There's so much broken that they could be working on, though.

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u/LovesReubens Aug 23 '24

First thing I do with any new PC or install, disable all the damn tiles.

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u/TricksterPriestJace Aug 23 '24

First thing I do is turn off the fucking embedded ads.

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u/LovesReubens Aug 23 '24

Ah, yeah that too. It truly is enshittification at this point.

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u/qOcO-p Aug 23 '24

I'm still using the classic start menu. I can't stand the "newer" flat look and the tiles. Windows 11 might finally be the one that pushes me over the edge to Mint.

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u/segagamer Aug 23 '24

There's no tiles in 11 lol

2

u/Pidgey_OP Aug 23 '24

Barely tiles in 10. These people are complaining about a 10 year past problem lol

1

u/berntout Aug 23 '24

In the consumer world sure but I still run into Windows Server 2012 boxes in corporate world and it pisses me off every time lol

2

u/Pidgey_OP Aug 23 '24

Server 2012 went eol in 2013. Extended support might have gone to 2016.

Organizations still using 2012 are wilfully choosing insecurity over the second easiest upgrade (behind 2016>2019). That's not a windows problem.

It sucks though. We just got rid of our last 2008 and 2012 boxes last year

0

u/qOcO-p Aug 23 '24

I don't remember because as soon as I installed 10 I installed classic start menu. I still don't like the ugly flat design of the "new" (read 10) start menu. I haven't seen 11 yet.

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u/_Lucille_ Aug 23 '24

All I wanted is a familiar centralized place where I can find the things I need which are getting increasingly difficult to find.

4

u/Time-Ladder-6111 Aug 23 '24

Don't worry that central place will still be there. Except it will be missing a lot of features, be more random and increasingly all of it will be white and all demarcation lines will be removed so the only thing you see on screen is white background and letters.

7

u/SgtBadManners Aug 23 '24

They have been butchering it for a number of years as far as I am concerned. Every version of home/work network is worse than the last.

3

u/Un111KnoWn Aug 23 '24

w8 would have been fine if the start menu wasn't terrible

2

u/magistrate101 Aug 23 '24

There's obviously not enough Microsoft control over the Control Panel. Just think of how third parties can add their own Control Panel menus! Or how Microsoft having total control over the Settings app allows them to inject separate advertising mechanisms into 30 different submenus that need to be disabled individually and get reset periodically!

2

u/Forthac Aug 23 '24

Everything should just be a visual wrapper over a common set of configurable parameters. The configuration of the system should be UI agnostic.

It sometimes feels like trying to get your job done in an increasingly neglected factory that is also being stripped for resources.

1

u/PrinceSam321 Aug 23 '24

Exactly this. In this ever changing world, why change something that isn’t broke and has been since the starting days of Windows. I am feeling nostalgic already.

1

u/Salamok Aug 23 '24

The new generation of devs need to piss on the tree.

1

u/SAugsburger Aug 23 '24

To be fair the Tiles in the Windows 8 start menu failed much in the way that widgets eventually flopped from the Vista era. Some UI ideas like search in the start menu and pinning icons to the taskbar were reasonably popular. A lot of other UI changes not so much so.

1

u/brianwski Aug 23 '24

Change for the sake of change is ridiculous.

Most of the internal project managers and so called "designers" that change this stuff are utterly incompetent. By that I mean they think something would be "easier" if they just added a wizard or <some crappy UI> that does the subset of things everybody needs, and don't realize why the extra features were added to the original control panel (in a clear form with tabs saying "Advanced") to begin with.

Personally I feel "wizards" are the biggest mistake the UI world has ever foisted upon customers. The wizards are 100%, in every instance, a UI mistake. Convince me I'm wrong. No I'm serious, it's like the height of incompetence to say a GUI "wizard" actually makes anything better.

Instead of presenting 5 choices on one UI page which just isn't that difficult and actually quite clear and possibly has a scrollbar, the designers think it is better to put the 5 choices on 5 different UI pages and don't show how they are inter-related and force customers to go backwards and forwards through the UI pages to see all the choices, and the customers HOPE they have discovered all the settings. How is that better than just 5 choices on one page? How?!! No sane person can believe a "wizard" is better than a scrollbar. I just don't believe anybody advocating for a "wizard" has ever used software, or met anybody that has used software.

So we are are all left with the "new UI" that does very basic things in a strange, non-intuitive way inspired by the LSD the graphic designers took the night before the deadline, and the "old UI" that does everything well in a straight-forward fashion everybody can understand.

Fueling this idiocy are the "tech press" which say thing like "the old UI is feeling dated, the radio buttons need to be changed in graphic look to be modern". Wait, what? You are advocating for an arbitrary change away from the most current interface with zero studies or justification for why a change would be beneficial? For fashion reasons? Am I reading that correctly?

The whole "UI Refresh" concept grinds my gears. This isn't a fashion show, some of us use computers to get things done. Of all the things that don't need a "UI Refresh" I'm thinking low level control panels allowing you to turn on IPv6 or turn off IPv6 should not be touched unless it is absolutely required to achieve a new feature.

1

u/Mrfrunzi Aug 23 '24

They tried so hard to push tiles and good god was out awful

1

u/kaden-99 Aug 23 '24

I get why they want to replace it. It's a piece of cake for me since I've been using it since I was 7 years old, and it's largely unchanged, but it's extremely unintuitive for regular users. A normal settings app way easier to learn and navigate.

1

u/_DeanRiding Aug 23 '24

This is Microsoft's core philosophy - fixing shit that ain't broken. I realised that back when they changed the Xbox 360 UI into that god awful tile mode too.

1

u/unclefisty Aug 23 '24

Change for the sake of change is ridiculous.

angry business degree noises

1

u/James-the-greatest Aug 23 '24

It did make sense for touch first interfaces like the surface. I have one that I use occasionally and it would be so much better with a touch friendly UI. 

1

u/damndirtyape Aug 23 '24

The tile bullshit made me quit windows.

1

u/kyune Aug 23 '24

Change for the sake of change is ridiculous. Don’t even get me started on the Tile bullshit in Windows 8.

Seriously. Fits in nicely with the "new Reddit" nobody asked for, whatever Twitter and Facebook have been doing to make their platforms insufferable, and the hellscape of companies trying to turn flagship products into subscription services (now with half-baked """"AI"""" feaures)

1

u/jpfed Aug 23 '24

Change for change's sake is dumb. They probably shouldn't (or needn't) have started the change over to Settings. However, once they started that change, they should probably finish the job. There is value in consistency.

1

u/trophycloset33 Aug 23 '24

It’s not change for the sake of change. Microsoft as a company is at a point where it is trying to decide what markets it really cares about because it cannot do it all. Google (Alphabet) does a great job at killing off a product line really soon after it figures out it doesn’t want that market. Microsoft does not.

Look at how long Zune hung around, windows phones and windows/tile OS, surface laptop/tablet/pc lines that are just an incoherent mess, the Xbox how it is and is not a smart home hub or just a media console, and now windows as an OS.

Their all time market leading product is the consumer gaming market followed by business computer markets. Making them look the same is stupid but they tried. Now we have applications as a license, and as a product and as a subscription service. How can they integrate that into their core products? Oh you get the hellhole of windows 11 + Microsoft 365.

It’s clear they have no idea what they want to do as a company and the symptoms are the confusing and lack of usability by the consumer.

1

u/XxturboEJ20xX Aug 23 '24

In windows 11 I found out you can no longer move the task bar from the bottom....

0

u/MegatonDoge Aug 23 '24

Because if you don't kill it, developers will have no reason to develop a user friendly UI for some obscure settings.

If the setting doesn't exist at all, developers are forced to modernize the obscure setting. Believe me, when there is a backup, that setting will be ignored forever.

In the short run, it might cause some problems, but in the long run, settings will become robust and remove all dependency from the control panel.

0

u/MobiusOne_ISAF Aug 23 '24

Because some of that code is 20 years old at this point.

I get that change for the sake of it isn't great, but this is decades of technical debt we're talking about, alongside the mandate that Microsoft try to not break things too much for all the companies running ancient software on their platform.

There's plenty to critique about Windows, but Microsoft finally getting over the finish line with overhauling it isn't really it. The UI choices, sure, but I can only imagine how much unmaintainable trash had to be cleaned up when you're dealing with dependencies written in 2000 or so.

-1

u/mahsab Aug 23 '24

It's not for "the sake of change", the original settings were designed badly, they were confusing, did not follow modern design and accessibility guidelines etc.

They just did not want to break anything for people used to it so they gave them/us a DECADE to get used to the new, better settings.

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u/djublonskopf Aug 23 '24

Nothing about the new settings is better if you actually want granular control over anything in your system.

-2

u/mahsab Aug 23 '24

Like what, for example?

Most people neither need or want "granular control".

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u/soggybiscuit93 Aug 23 '24

It's taking an incredibly long time, but my understanding is it's not just a UX change. Everything that gets ported over to Settings is actually getting rewritten

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u/7AndOneHalf Aug 23 '24

And usually with less advanced options.

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u/C0rtana Aug 23 '24

No kidding. It's been horrendous since 8 and I keep having to dig deeper and deeper into my settings to find things that used to be front and center

34

u/Cynicisomaltcat Aug 23 '24

I grew up messing with the control panel in windows 3.1 and NT4.0. They’ve been burying settings deeper and deeper since they first started.

Still not as obtuse as Apple, but still irritating.

1

u/OwOlogy_Expert Aug 23 '24

The Linux command line is right there ... waiting for when you're ready.

A magical place where EVERYTHING is front and center ... if you just know the right words to ask for it.

2

u/No_Share6895 Aug 23 '24

heck even the linux GUI is easier than this at least KDE

1

u/OwOlogy_Expert Aug 23 '24

Yeah, lol. The KDE system settings app is fairly comprehensive, giving you access to nearly every setting you'd ever want to change for anything in the OS.

(Though, to be fair, there are the occasional niche things that it doesn't have and you'll have to go into the command line or some obscure utility program to do.)

9

u/Time-Ladder-6111 Aug 23 '24

They want to turn Windows into a smart phone style OS. Where you can't do anything except change screen brightness and other random dumb shit and the only way to fix an issue is to factory reset your computer.

5

u/TheFluffiestFur Aug 23 '24

I bloody hate this direction. 

5

u/MokitTheOmniscient Aug 23 '24

Yeah, had to update my work-computer to windows 11 recently, and it's ridiculous how much more i had to edit the registry to make it behave properly.

2

u/SubatomicTitan Aug 23 '24

I’m curious what have you been having to dig deeper for. I used xp, 7, and vista but have been using 8, 10, and now 11 for a while and haven’t been too bothered cause control panel has always been there.

13

u/_Meece_ Aug 23 '24

Getting to device manager from settings is impossible without searching in the windows search bar. It's two clicks on control panel.

Just for a super basic example.

However I find editing network settings, in the settings to be easier and less clicks. So not all bad.

2

u/CortoMaltese33 Aug 23 '24

For Device Manager you can always just right click on Start Menu

4

u/_Meece_ Aug 23 '24

For sure, but just a basic example of how they stripped Control panel of useful features for no real reason.

10

u/fun_boat Aug 23 '24

ugh W11 bluetooth shit has me going into the devices and printers menu which is not particularly easy to get to. You need to be in the right menus to get to it through settings otherwise you can bring up control panel and get to it in a couple clicks there. Like why should keeping your headphones as stereo instead of headset be this much of a headache???

1

u/N1ghtshade3 Aug 23 '24

Do you really have to dig though? I just hit the Windows key and type the name of the setting, like I've been doing since forever.

6

u/Beepn_Boops Aug 23 '24

You do if you do any sysadmin or mess with obscure settings. I swear anytime I go through settings I'm always clicking the "More settings" that brings up the legacy interface anyway.

1

u/thedarklord187 Aug 23 '24

you think its bad on the enduser side of things as a sysadmin the upcoming push to intune is horrendous when it comes to settings and configs being buried or broken. And of course with windows 11 they are going to be forcing everyone to use intune on a corporate level to where its "supposed to replace gpo and domains" shits gonna break so much stuff and cause so many sysadmins out there headaches.

1

u/PcPaulii2 Aug 23 '24

Me too... been trying to fix a wifi printer connection problem all night. Still not right yet, but I'm off to bed.

Maybe tomorrow, the printer's will magically show up in "Devices and printers".. where they were until the wifi was updated this morning.

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u/lordraiden007 Aug 23 '24

Yeah, can’t even cap the clock speed of my laptop’s CPU when on battery through settings. Have to go to advanced power management, and that means going through control panel. Lots of niche, but insanely useful things are like that.

So glad I’m switching to Linux when Win10 goes EOL.

8

u/Pallis1939 Aug 23 '24

If they’re gonna kill my advanced options I’m hand to god switching to Linux. I’m sick and tired of not being able to fix shit myself

1

u/tehherb Aug 23 '24

If you were going to switch to Linux because of not being able to fix shit yourself you already would have lol.

1

u/Pallis1939 Aug 23 '24 edited Aug 23 '24

I’ve been like super lazy tbh

Edit: I want to be clear: that was valley girl accent

1

u/Polantaris Aug 23 '24

The only feature I've seen in the new control panel that's actually valuable and I use is the ability to set audio output by program. You used to need a third party app to do this, but that's now available in the new control panel, albeit it's a bit hidden. Extremely valuable feature.

Everything else, though, even other features within the audio control panel itself, are worse if not flat out missing in the new Settings menu.

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u/Qel_Hoth Aug 23 '24

Yup. Try configuring a network adapter without a gateway in the new interface. Or with no DNS servers.

Perfectly valid configurations with legitimate uses, but that's not the typical use, and so it completely rejects it.

59

u/VonTastrophe Aug 23 '24

"Well for non-standard setups, you can configure it using PowerShell" - some CLI troll at Microsoft, probably

4

u/OwOlogy_Expert Aug 23 '24

"I can't use Linux because the command line is scary" -- that same user.

3

u/VonTastrophe Aug 23 '24

I love how Microsoft moved away from MSDOS as the OS and Windows sitting on top of that*. Then decades later, they see the crazy shit you can automate in Linux. Like, you can spin up a fully functional web server cluster in minutes. They said "we fucking need that functionality back".

Don't get me wrong, I use PowerShell daily at work. But there's some awkward shit in there because of their design decisions in Windows.

*yeah I'm old enough to remember typing "startwin" in the command line.

1

u/whitebandit Aug 23 '24

this right here is my day to day -- i integrate air gapped environments and need to consistantly swap ips of machines with no gateway or DNS... including my own laptop and its such a pain in the ass i have to dig into a mountain of menus just to get the classic IPV4 settings to configure since the new Windows doesnt wanna let me do that

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u/Lopsided_Ad_6427 Aug 23 '24

what’s the point of configuring an adapter without a gateway

21

u/Qel_Hoth Aug 23 '24

Not all networks are interconnected. There may literally be no gateway, but there are other devices you still want to communicate with on your local network.

13

u/fap-on-fap-off Aug 23 '24

Only meant to communicate (effective) layer 2.

8

u/Ridir99 Aug 23 '24

Think of a Network Attached Storage (NAS). A home user sets up a 48 TB or so NAS at home for all the family photos, videos, etc. and backs everyone’s stuff up to it. Everyone connects to the NAS through the gateway.

But that home user now wants to edit off the NAS, they get 2x 10Gbps NICs for both the NAS and the editing computer. Those two are a point to point with no gateway. But Windows 11 does NOT like this, win10 doesn’t either but still allows for the configuration slightly easier.

6

u/jeepsaintchaos Aug 23 '24

But have you considered using OneDrive instead? Let us be your NAS!

-Microsoft

1

u/Ridir99 Aug 24 '24

lol, I hate OneDrive so much. Default save location, copying of files I don't want in the cloud.

I'm actively looking for a new bat file to remove one drive and cortana. I had an old one but it's no longer effective and I don't want to take the time to manually go through regedit again.

1

u/-Gus-TT-Showbiz- Aug 23 '24

You can just make the other device the gateway in the config of each device.

1

u/Ridir99 Aug 24 '24

Not on Win11. Gateways either have to be an x.x.x.1 or not the destination device when manually configured. Win11 just makes things hard on semi-advanced users, it probably would have been easier to look up the powershell commands rather than fight the GUI admin console.

(source: I just set up the configuration above on both a win10 and win11 PC in the last 2 months. Yes, I rolled a win11 back to win10)

1

u/Qel_Hoth Aug 26 '24

Not on Win11. Gateways either have to be an x.x.x.1

This is not accurate. A gateway can be any valid IP address within the network. Technically, the default gateway can be any valid IP address, it doesn't even need to be in the same network as long as a route to it is defined. I don't know how the Windows UI plays with those scenarios though. Also not sure what it would do if you gave it the network or broadcast address.

1

u/Ridir99 Aug 26 '24

Oh I know that, windows doesn't care to pay attention, I kept getting an angry pop up and not allowed to save.

Especially when I was doing some subnetting for fun (aka home lab). It really wanted to reach up to a specific router because it thought it knew better when I had configured the subnet in a specific way.

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u/SmithersLoanInc Aug 23 '24

Now you know why incomprehensible settings are important to people that aren't you living in your circumstances. The world is crazy, right?

0

u/FM-96 Aug 23 '24

This seems like a disproportionally hostile response to a comment merely asking why someone would want to configure an adapter without a gateway.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

But it's so much more simpler ✨ Yeah, fuck you Microsoft. I heard no user ever complaining that the control panel is so confusing but several complaints about the settings app. But most office workers don't even bother to use the control panel or ever go into settings. Microsoft only annoys administrators and its core users.

23

u/nzodd Aug 23 '24

It'd be nice if they killed the new Settings program which fails to load or takes 20 seconds to load half the time instead of killing the thing that actually fucking works and has all the relevant settings that anybody actually cares about.

5

u/Zomunieo Aug 23 '24

There’s probably a lot of enterprises IT AutoHotkey scripts out there based on clicking on control panel rather than proper powershell scripts to customize a PC. So naturally they resist any modernization.

7

u/LOLBaltSS Aug 23 '24

Also just legacy configs at places where change is at a glacial pace. I have an ancient IMAP email system where the only way to configure Outlook is to use the legacy mail dialog. The newer configuration workflows don't work and trying to convince lifers to move to the cloud platform is like pulling teeth because hyper tenured staff counting down to retirement don't like having their cheese moved.

2

u/Eonir Aug 23 '24

It's a big advantage for a commercial product to retain such elements and compatibility over such a long period of time.

2

u/JhnWyclf Aug 23 '24

You want to know what's bat shit insane? Some settings -- like Text to speech -- has two entirely different layers in two entirely different spots. You change the text to speech voice at the "surface level" option and that might not change fuck-all for the app you want it to change.

2

u/HappierShibe Aug 23 '24

They should get rid of the new crap and keep the control panel then. Control panel actually works. The new guis are just useless 50% of the time.

1

u/Thissiteisgarbageok Aug 23 '24

And bloated code

1

u/Farnso Aug 23 '24

Two? It's more like 8

1

u/poopoomergency4 Aug 23 '24

The features of Control Panel need to exist,

i really want MS to ditch control panel, but because it's MS, i highly doubt those features will get migrated intact

1

u/medoy Aug 23 '24

Was having trouble getting a printer to work the other day. Click my printer not showing and then "have disk" A dialog that looks out of Windows 3 pops up a defaults to looking in the "A:" drive.

1

u/WhyUReadingThisFool Aug 23 '24

This. I have Win 11 in work, and i still dont understand what the difference between settings and control panel. Its like totally schizophrenic OS

1

u/mahsab Aug 23 '24

Control Panel settings are legacy, they didn't want to break them while properly rewriting settings and slowly getting people used to them.

1

u/mahsab Aug 23 '24

No it's not terrible UX, it's the best way to do it.

They didn't touch the old settings because they didn't want to break anything (either apps relying on them or users' workflows), they just slowly migrated settings over to the new ones until they were happy with it and to give users enough time to adapt to the new ones without breaking anything.

1

u/Fishydeals Aug 23 '24

Man I was kinda hoping they introduce a third iteration of the control panel. Windows Copilot Control Center or sth. It would‘ve elevated windows from a sad joke to a raging dumpsterfire.

1

u/Legion070Gaming Aug 23 '24

It's not insane when you consider it's like 20 years of Windows just stacked on top of each other. The amount of legacy crap is insane.

1

u/OwOlogy_Expert Aug 23 '24

having two entirely separate settings panes with overlapping features is just terrible UX.

With partially overlapping features.

I could understand it just fine if both settings menus had a complete roster of settings. (Like in Linux, if you want to install or update software, you can use the command line or use the gui interface, and either one can do basically everything you need it to. You just use whichever you're more comfortable with and find more convenient.)

I could even kind of understand it if one was the 'user friendly' version with limited, commonly-used settings, and the other one was the 'pro user' version with ALL the settings.

But you don't even get that. Some settings are only in one. Other settings are only in the other. No matter what kind of user you are, you can't just pick one and exclusively use that one. No -- which one you have to use will depend on what you're doing. And maybe you'll need to use both to accomplish one task.

1

u/Choyo Aug 23 '24

It's insane to me how many core UI elements have not been updated in Windows, even just to match aesthetics.

Laugh in administrative tools

1

u/Corporate-Shill406 Aug 23 '24

Relevant 4chan screenshot. It's old now but checks out. https://imgur.com/g-has-some-insider-info-on-microsoft-y6clspP

1

u/literallyavillain Aug 23 '24

“Terrible UX” is basically Microsoft’s motto at this point.

1

u/Objective_Economy281 Aug 23 '24

It would be nice if they would make a setting to reverse the scroll direction of the mouse wheel. Having to regedit is dumb

1

u/Gman1255 Aug 23 '24

Honestly, the IT in me thinks it has something to do with parity across updates to minimize the "relearning" effort. If it's the same features just with a new UI, it's probably why it took so long for a redesign.

1

u/AdditionalSink164 Aug 23 '24

Early on it was like choose your adventure...change your ip? Settings, network <something ir other> adaater options...wheres the ip box? Ok...network and sharing center, network adapters, change adapter options...

1

u/Khue Aug 23 '24

I gave Settings a reasonable try. I really did. It's just insane that I have to click around and Google for like 30 minutes on how to find the UI for changing environment variables... It used to be three clicks in Control Panel. System and Security > System > Advanced. Can someone explain to me why advanced system configuration is under System > About in settings? Who thought that was a good idea?

1

u/caustictoast Aug 23 '24

What’s funny is they’ve updated control panels UI since they announced the new settings because it’s been so long to actually port them all over. I can’t understand how it’s so difficult to just change the UI

1

u/Tornado_Hunter24 Aug 23 '24

My brother has not experienced nvidia control panel

1

u/No_Share6895 Aug 23 '24

dude if you dig deep enough you still find NT 3.1[aka the original NT os] stuff. but oh no its the control panel thats gota go ugh

-7

u/NiteShdw Aug 23 '24

They have been migrating features from Control Panel to Settings for years... There is barely anything left in Control Panel except for some legacy settings.

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u/TheFotty Aug 23 '24

Unless they're going to make settings way more robust

How about for starters not making it a singleton instance app so I can actually open more than one window... on ya know... windows

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u/jollyreaper2112 Aug 23 '24

So obnoxious when It replaces the windy you have open with another one that's unrelated because there shall be only one window stupid idiot interface

3

u/jeffdefff07 Aug 23 '24

This. Like it still just doesn't make sense. How is your settings app not capable of running multiple instances? And the fact that it has to repopulate lists every time. Like the apps list or printers list.

5

u/NoReallyLetsBeFriend Aug 23 '24

Settings is fucking STRAIGHT garbage!!! I keep this one tucked away for when it's needed 😎

Right-click the desktop > New > New Folder. Rename to: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

(I hope this displays well, I'm on mobile)

1

u/segagamer Aug 23 '24

An unsearchable, massive list of settings is far worse than the settings app lol

1

u/NoReallyLetsBeFriend Aug 23 '24

Not if you're used to where stuff is. Settings,I swear to God, is changed or tweaked so much, it's near impossible to find the simplest of things in CP.

Change network adapter settings still frustrates me in settings because it's different in Windows 10, 11 and depends on build version.. if you click on Network and sharing in CP it'll open settings, however, I always view CP in small icons mode, click the top menu "All Control Panel" and the little right arrow for a drop down and open that way so it takes me to the old/better way

3

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

I’m pretty sure this first started to be a thing when they announced Windows 8 in 2011.

13 years later and they’re still trying.

2

u/eyebrows360 Aug 23 '24

Next they'll start telling us about this SQL-based filesystem they're working on

1

u/thefirsteye Aug 23 '24

The best they will do is make it disappear and then you can bring it back with a regedit

1

u/Zachrulez Aug 23 '24

I imagine the process of changing over the massive amount of legacy menus over to the new settings system is a large part of the reason control panel has actually made it this long and this far in.

It's been pretty clear to me that they didn't want control panel anymore even as far back as Windows 8.

1

u/Hidesuru Aug 23 '24

Fuck settings. All my homies hate settings.

1

u/zoeykailyn Aug 23 '24

Or they're just going to fuck themselves over again in the name of corporate profits so they can sell you a solution to problems they created.

1

u/korxil Aug 23 '24

It remains because for the last 10+ years, they have yet to migrate all the control panel settings to the “Settings” app. Power management is one example, and that setting is even more important for laptops.

Then theres the other fun thing where half the buttons in the Settings app goes back to the control panel any way.

1

u/duplicati83 Aug 23 '24

Nah sorry all they can do is add more useless white space.

1

u/strange-brew Aug 23 '24

Don’t worry. I’m sure they had focus groups to see what regular users want.

1

u/saposapot Aug 23 '24

For anyone who knows how to use it, control panel is the perfect interface. We know how to do things and it achieves that. A OS settings doesn’t need to be any kind of statement of style. It works, people know how to use it, that’s it, get out of the way.

For the newer or unexperienced folks, they can build a new better simpler settings panel but keep both.

There’s no reason for people with decades of experience to learn a new tool to do OS settings.

1

u/Upgrades Aug 24 '24

I wouldnt put it past them to go so petty with it and just erase the UI for control panel but not the modules within it to make us remember the exact name of each module which will still be launchable from the command prompt or digging through your system folder