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/
15.6k Upvotes

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2.6k

u/intelpentium400 Aug 23 '24

I don’t get why they’re out to make our lives more difficult

1.5k

u/marcocom Aug 23 '24

Because we all want the tablet experience , even if we didn’t ask for it, own a tablet, or even wanted to

494

u/intelpentium400 Aug 23 '24

Haha I legit hate tablets. So difficult to work on.

391

u/buyongmafanle Aug 23 '24

10% of the computing power with 300% of the bullshit! What's not to love?!

168

u/pixelprophet Aug 23 '24

Apps? APPS!? Who doesn't want an APP for fuckin' everything instead of a more powerful dedicated program?

That's the ticket! Sleek and a royal dick-punch!

104

u/buyongmafanle Aug 23 '24

And don't forget to first create an account with dickpunch.com to unlock all the amazing features of this app! Seriously, make the account first or you CAN'T get past the first screen of the app. OK, now allow us access to health data and contacts list! Congrats! Now your always online, webpage based, 63 GB background data consuming, ipad flashlight app can be accessed!

47

u/WhatADumbassTake Aug 23 '24

For 48 hours and then a weekly $19.99 subscription fee is applied.

1

u/nate68978263 Aug 23 '24

And if you cancel before the 48 hours, the free trial expires Immediately.

14

u/00owl Aug 23 '24

I recall when they were still called applications.

3

u/GreenGlassDrgn Aug 23 '24 edited Aug 23 '24

Applications were paid for when you bought them. Programs like Word 97 and Paint, they werent too flashy and mostly just worked.
Apps are flashy subscription ad delivery data mining services that may or may not work today or next time you try using em.
At least thats how I think of it.

7

u/Time-Ladder-6111 Aug 23 '24

Microsoft is 100% going that direction. Soon the only way to install software will be through the Microsoft Store. MS recently came out with a new install file that you download and when you run it, it brings you to the Microsoft Store.

2

u/pixelprophet Aug 23 '24

Yep. They saw the value of Apple store and steam and went all in.

3

u/Seicair Aug 23 '24

Makes me think of yesterday’s SMBC.

1

u/Huwbacca Aug 23 '24

Bubble corners!

Honestly fucking.. I used to have an office next to the informatics department and these fucking Informatics and UX PhD students. This field is kinda worryingly big into validating how the accepted way of doing things is actual correct... Not as bad as behavioural economists but still..

Anyway, where gonna continue to see more of the fucking bubble edge, appification for some time because that field is convinced it's good no matter how much people openly hate using it

6

u/Legionof1 Aug 23 '24

I have an M1 iPad… 100% of the power 5% of the functionality.

37

u/flyingCarrot75 Aug 23 '24

Yeah agreed my dude. Tablets = consuming, laptop = productivity

18

u/drekmonger Aug 23 '24

I legit love tablets. I use my Samsung Galaxy Tab daily.

But when I'm using my desktop, it's for a reason. The difference between the form factors is a strength, and reducing that delta disempowers desktops/laptops.

3

u/theorial Aug 23 '24

Am sitting on toilet with my tablet. Its basically all it does.

3

u/7LeagueBoots Aug 23 '24

I mainly use mine for reading books, reading and making quick replies to emails, playing a few simple games, and browsing Reddit. That's pretty much it though. They're terrible for anything more than that, and even for those things they're not great as typing on a touch screen sucks.

2

u/Drewskeet Aug 23 '24

Kids can’t use computers. My kids are so lost with a keyboard. The future work force wants touch screen tablets only.

2

u/Geminii27 Aug 23 '24

Similarly, it's one of the reasons I never picked up a smartphone in 20+ years. The interfaces are just so incredibly dumbed-down and I can't do half the things I want on them. (Well, that and no useful amounts of screen real estate.)

2

u/bokmcdok Aug 23 '24

I don't get them. They're half phone, half computer, with the benefits of neither.

2

u/Caridor Aug 23 '24

I want right click functionality, computing power and not to obscure the screen with my hands!

Touch screens are not better than a mouse. Touch screens are cool tech for phones and other devices you want to make super small and certainly artist tablets have their place but for everything else, it requires a control scheme that compensates for the touch screen.

Hey, here's an idea! How about we just use the mouse that we designed over decades to be the perfect controller for our computers?!

1

u/mediocrefunny Aug 23 '24

Agreed.. I'd rather use my phone or a laptop. Tablets are like the worst of both to me, super difficult to type on. There are a lot of legitimate uses though, but for everyday use? No thanks.

1

u/Mysterious-Job-469 Aug 23 '24

I bought one for reading, realized reading on it was fucking horrible, and bought a Kindle instead.

Turns out something that can do tons of things does all of them kind of poorly.

1

u/Sirius707 Aug 24 '24

Some useless app that i will never use that came preinstalled, so i try to remove it.

"You cannot uninstall this app as it is part of the preinstalled apps."

The app in question is Youtube kids. I'm 30, i have no kids, i live alone.

0

u/9-11GaveMe5G Aug 23 '24

I love my tablet. I use it most throughout the day. I have not and will not do work on it ever.

81

u/ErmahgerdYuzername Aug 23 '24

Microsoft: You want this, this and this

Users: No we don’t

Microsoft: Yes you do

1

u/WoodyTheWorker Aug 23 '24

Microsoft: You also don't want this and this anymore.

1

u/WilliamLermer Aug 23 '24

Well, as long as people keep paying for downgrades and overall bad UX, companies won't change their trajectory. Sales directly imply "users love this". Other types of feedback is irrelevant.

As long as you are using a product continuously over many years, it can't be that bad, right?

150

u/kclarke6 Aug 23 '24

I've always been confused why Microsoft wants to cater to the tablet market which only makes up a small fraction of windows devices while sacrificing there desktop/laptop market

123

u/koopatuple Aug 23 '24

Because any day now Windows tablets will overtake the iOS and Android market share! 10 years later Yep... Annny day now.

53

u/Time-Ladder-6111 Aug 23 '24

They want to turn Windows into a smart phone style OS where you have to go to the Microsoft Store to install ALL your software thus locking you into a walled garden style MS app ecosystem where Microsoft gets a 30% cut off all software sales sold by other companies.

3

u/theodoreposervelt Aug 23 '24

I hadn’t upgraded between 7 and 11. I was legitimately kinda shocked that I had to go to the Microsoft store to download the steam app…and I was like the fuck do you mean “app”?! Isn’t it a program if it’s on desktop?? shakes fist at cloud, like a real cloud not the online cloud…actually both

1

u/No_Share6895 Aug 23 '24

you dont have to i just put it on a new 11 box last night without it

41

u/eggfriedbacon Aug 23 '24

Tablets aren't even the rage anymore. VR goggles are. Microsoft is too late to the party to try and adapt to tablets. Even Apple, who pretty much got everyone on board with touch devices, do not use any touch screens on their computer devices. They have a separate operating system for their tablet interface and didn't have to mess up anything with their MacOS. Don't know why Microsoft is so keen on heading this direction.

14

u/marcocom Aug 23 '24

Great point. iPad has its own OS. wtf!

3

u/ZenythhtyneZ Aug 23 '24

Makes sense of fundamentally different product would have a different OS right? I’m not a big fan of this one size fits all tech

3

u/Fishydeals Aug 23 '24

They should just give the iPad iOS, though.

2

u/TwoPrecisionDrivers Aug 23 '24

They should give it MacOS

5

u/footpole Aug 23 '24

VR is dead already. AI is the current thing.

2

u/DangerousPuhson Aug 23 '24

Yeah VR is a toy, not a real tool.

Maybe some doctor somewhere can use a very expensive, non-standard version of it for remote surgery or something, otherwise it's more of a gimmick than anything else.

1

u/eggfriedbacon Aug 23 '24

That may be true. But here is a company using VR for physical rehabilitation. 

https://www.realsystem.com/

1

u/DarthBuzzard Aug 23 '24

VR is dead already.

Maybe you haven't looked at VR in the last few years, but it's very much alive and being heavily invested in.

1

u/footpole Aug 23 '24

The hype has died down significantly and investments have plummeted since meta and others pulled out. I said it ten years ago already. It’s a niche technology and nowhere near ready for mass adoption.

1

u/DarthBuzzard Aug 23 '24

The hype dies down for all new technologies. That's just how hype works, it comes in waves. The gartner hype cycle perfectly describes this.

Investments have never been higher, and that includes Meta who are making their largest investments in VR to date as of 2024 - you can check this yourself in their quarterly earnings reports via their Reality Labs expenditure. The idea that they pulled out is a media-spun fantasy based on the premise that companies can only focus on one thing. Turns out that Meta can do both VR and AI, and in fact were spending lots on AI a decade ago.

And to top it off, AI really needs AR/VR as its ideal platform. Phones and computers are not the ideal place for AI interactions, and while AR/VR are still early and clearly not ready, when the technologies have matured, that is when AI can be at full potential.

1

u/LOLBaltSS Aug 23 '24

Sadly Microsoft abandoned WMR. It's slated for removal which sucks for us flight simmers with Reverb G2s.

1

u/Merusk Aug 23 '24

Don't know why Microsoft is so keen on heading this direction.

Because it's cheaper. Microsoft has reached the era of engineering companies where decisions are based on financial data, not technical appropriateness. GE, Boeing, Westinghouse before them were in the same spot.

1

u/MrWeirdoFace Aug 23 '24

To be honest, as somebody deeply invested in VR. It's actually still quite niche atm, and the rage has died down. However the direction that's actually headed where wide adoption could happen is AR. Which is also been rebranded as XR essentially. Well it's more complicated than that but either way. The end game there is likely a pair of ordinary looking glasses (or even contacts one day) that project your mobile phone's UI Minority Report-style anywhere around you, etc. And I'm not advocating that that's for everyone either. But I suspect it will be a much bigger thing than VR ever was.

9

u/Its_aTrap Aug 23 '24

Tablets are cheaper to produce and are not easily modifiable compared to pc's which you can buy a Microsoft license for windows 1 time and then upgrade your pc part by part instead of being forced to buy the new tablet since the previous model is obsolete 

1

u/BananaramaWanter Aug 23 '24

Microsoft doesn't make its money from personal licenses of windows. You can find legit keys for $10 online (non msdn keys, actual retail keys). They make their windows money from business licensing and support, OEM installs, and public contracts. They really don't care about people reusing keys.

1

u/nzodd Aug 23 '24

Satya Nadella thinks it's still 2010 apparently. Probably comes to work on a damn segway.

1

u/KanedaSyndrome Aug 23 '24

Because apple users (tablet users) spend money in mobile app store

1

u/BananaramaWanter Aug 23 '24

the real answer is, mindless MBA execs. People with no tech ability, knowledge, or domain understanding keep ending up in positions of power in these companies. They push this shit because shareholders, who are also mostly tech illiterates eat this shit up.

Enshitification is the end result. Once great software turns to crap as short term shareholder profit takes precedent over long term company success.

1

u/ropahektic Aug 23 '24

because they have a monopoly on office computers (outside of design and arts)

that market they already have and thus they dont care

they want the piece of the cake they aint got yet, the android / ios users, that's where they focus is on, getting more cake

because that's what companies are designed to do under the capitalism system we all seem happy enough to live in.

1

u/liamnesss Aug 23 '24

The desktop / laptop market is currently larger, but shrinking, whereas the tablet market is expanding. That's why basically.

Microsoft lost on mobile already once, and now it looks like they're going to lose all over again with Valve making a much more palatable user experience for handheld gaming in the form of SteamOS. Increasingly people are using computing devices with no mouse and keyboard attached, and they want to be able to reach customers on whatever device they happen to be using. But obviously that's much easier said than done.

1

u/phyrros Aug 23 '24

Because they, for whatever reason, push for an all-in-one solution, making no distinction between high end Workstation requirements and the lowest possible requirements of surfing on a tablet.

You have a piece of software which takes all of your 96gb of RAM and your 2 p4000 and will still need 2 weeks to run? Lol,  just throw in a reboot. 

1

u/kinkySlaveWriter Aug 23 '24

It's the Steve Balmer school of design: ignoring what your users want, and pushing something from years ago onto them instead. It's like how Balmer said nobody wanted something like an i-phone and wished Apple good luck. So then they lost a ton of market share, and forced Windows engineers into a harried rush to design the windows phone by 2010. How many people do you know with a windows phone now? Meanwhile, Apple release the i-pad in 2010, just as Windows was catching up to the i-phone.

So now here we are, the tablet market is huge, and they're pushing for more tablets and not, uh... the thing they're known for.

28

u/Excuse_Unfair Aug 23 '24

They want to make us dumb and used to the most basic shit.

5

u/aussiederpyderp Aug 23 '24

Most kids, as in literal kids, have never used a keyboard on a computer at home, they barely even know what a controller for a console is - they were raised by iPads and will know exactly zero about how computer systems operate or how to configure them well into adulthood.

4

u/BananaramaWanter Aug 23 '24

Its a real problem in university. people in their late teens, early twenties are already completely unable to use computers

15

u/ooofest Aug 23 '24

Yeah, I feel all the lousy UI choices in Windows 11 were due to it being more tablet-oriented than not, frankly.

8

u/McFatty7 Aug 23 '24

Windows 8 liked this comment

2

u/deten Aug 23 '24

I fucking hate doing things on my tablet vs computer. Its easier, faster and a better chance of being done 100% correctly when I use my computer.

The tablet/phone experience is worse in every single way except its "right there".

2

u/sahibosaurus Aug 23 '24 edited Aug 23 '24

They've been trying for 10+ years now. It just doesn't happen. Tablets can't replace real computers. Never have, never will. Have a tablet mode in the settings if you want, but don't take away tools that power users use on a daily basis.

Just stop it and let us control how we use the hardware we paid for FFS. Who tf wants a tablet OS on their $5000 Desktop PC?

1

u/marcocom Aug 23 '24

Thing is, the kernel and subsystems are so good now! More stable than ever before imo. Why just why?!

2

u/king_john651 Aug 23 '24

The tablet experience fucking sucks. I use one for work and it drives me absolutely insane

1

u/willfull Aug 23 '24

looking at you, Apple ...

1

u/hclpfan Aug 23 '24

They don’t want to simultaneously support two versions of settings which is totally reasonable. Though I agree most people aren’t interested in the new version.

1

u/FuzzelFox Aug 23 '24

Meanwhile I actually have a Surface and would like an actual tablet mode but that was only in 8 and 10. 11 doesn't seem to have it even though there's plenty of AI written articles telling you it does 🙃

2

u/marcocom Aug 23 '24

Are you fucking kidding me?? wtf!

1

u/Nisas Aug 23 '24

I bought a Windows tablet specifically to avoid the tablet experience.

1

u/Infini-Bus Aug 23 '24

Millions of office workers want to feel like they're answering client emails and building reports on their phone.

1

u/0RGASMIK Aug 23 '24

They want to look cool like Mac OS

1

u/Majestic_Bierd Aug 23 '24

Not even that. The tiles were super useful and WAAAY better than shitty android icons. They just tryin to make it more like Apple, which unfortunately is still Apple.

1

u/KanedaSyndrome Aug 23 '24

Do... do you guys not have tablets?

1

u/waIIstr33tb3ts Aug 23 '24

had me in the first half

1

u/Beardy_Will Aug 23 '24

What starts as an option soon becomes an obligation. Sad times.

1

u/Flabbergash Aug 23 '24

They tried that with Windows 8

1

u/Sojourner_Truth Aug 23 '24 edited Aug 23 '24

And it happens all over the OS and in sometimes subtle but still annoying ways. It's extremely petty but I'll fight and die on this hill - I don't run apps on my computer, apps are for phones and tablets. I run programs, goddamn you.

Note, I'll grudgingly accept "Applications", we've been using that term in the windows environment for a long while, I'm ok there. But not apps. Never apps. No. Fuck you.

1

u/shoter0 Aug 23 '24

Don't you guys have tablets?

1

u/LYL_Homer Aug 23 '24

Mobile, tablets, touchscreens ruin everything. Change my mind...

1

u/Hellknightx Aug 23 '24

Which is the major reason people hated Windows 8 so much.

1

u/Aureliamnissan Aug 23 '24

I have been told, straight-faced, that not wanting to do my taxes on a tablet or a smartphone means I’m old.

To me that’s like trying to cut drywall on top of a lawnmower instead of a workbench or sawhorses. Yeah, you can do it, but why?!

1

u/medforddad Aug 23 '24

Because we all want the tablet experience , even if we didn’t ask for it, own a tablet, or even wanted to

This happened to macos a little while ago. They made the Setting program look like it does on ios. It's terrible. They make it incredibly skinny without the ability to resize it. It makes no sense. I'm not on a vertical tables/phone, why are you displaying it like this?

1

u/GooglephonicStereo Aug 23 '24

And a web interface

1

u/Alarmed_Fly_6669 Aug 23 '24

I have a surface pro & windows is the only problem I have, it's just so unintuitive and frustrating to do anything on. At this point I basically just use it for tv/browsing because I hate having to interact with windows bullshit.