Windows settings is pointless, long live Control Panel

Over the years, in my various Windows-related articles, I've written a great deal about these programs and their value (or lack thereof). Seemingly, there ought not to be any fresh reason to talk about them yet again. But there is. Just recently, Microsoft announced it was deprecating Control Panel, and then quickly went back and reworded the phrasing of this statement, following massive, massive backlash. You see, complaining does work wonders!

Well, reading that page, one specific phrase triggered me immensely. It was the totally deluded statement regarding Settings, reading: "...Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience". Ah, the modern and streamlined experience! Hot garbage. Well, for the umpteenth time, I will talk some more about Control Panel, Settings, the infestation of low-IQ touch-based stuff on the desktop, and such. Follow me, if you please.

Desktop + touch-inspired approach = Abject failure

It is very simple. Every single program out there, every single one, without exception, if given a so-called modern redesign, which basically means a flat interface and touch-like controls, instantly becomes worse than it was. It doesn't matter when, how or why. As soon as you add anything touch-like to any desktop program, you make it suck.

In fact, this is true for ALL venues of life. Let me sidetrack for a moment. Cars. Until a few years ago, the cabin, especially the driver's setup, was a pinnacle of sophistication, efficiency, ergonomics, and above all, safety. Every single thing done in the cabin was designed to make the driver more focused on the essential task of driving. But then, the touch brigades arrived ...

Ever since, cars - most of them - have become stupid tablets on wheels. Instead of having normal buttons and controls, you have stupid tablets and touch screens designed for idiots by people who have probably never driven a car in their life. You may say, this is your dinosaur opinion. No, this is a fact. A data-proven fact. The Swedish magazine Vi Bilagare did a comparison test on how long it takes to perform basic functions while driving across a range of cars, including a buttons-only 2005 vehicle. That old car won the test. Furthermore, Euro NCAP is going to provide a higher safety score for cars that favor physical buttons for essential fuctions over touch interfaces, starting in 2026. Very simple. Touch is stupid.

Back to the software ...

There are several reasons why adding anything "modern" makes programs on the desktop suck:

The simple form-factor constraints, as I've outlined in my article on this topic a while back. If you want touch interfaces or touch-like interfaces to provide the same density of information as their classic counterparts, you need huge, huge screens. Otherwise, you must bury functions and options in sub-menu after sub-menu, making usage far less efficient.

Touch paradigms favor less intelligent usage patterns. Very simple. You can read an excellent IEEE article called Apes with Apps (someone was quite witty there), from more than a decade ago. Bonobos can communicate using shiny pictograms and such. They cannot use keyboard and mouse.

Old software, so to speak, was often designed after meticulous, expensive research. Modern software is a vomlette of pointless code of trying to reinvent the wheel. There's nothing you can add to the 40-year-old desktop paradigm that can improve it. Nothing at all.

Modern interfaces are also ergonomically inferior. They use low-contrast elements, which make them less readable, less accessible, less efficient.

Here's an example for you: Microsoft's Exploit Mitigation. One of the best things Microsoft has ever done, and yet, it's almost completely ignored in the media, because it's not sensational or hax0ry enough. I'm a great fan of this technology, and vastly favor it over traditional AV solutions. In Windows 7/8, the functionality was enabled using the fabulous EMET utility. In the newer versions of Windows, you go through Settings (or by writing XML files like a chimp). Now, let me show you the difference between the two interfaces:

In EMET, you had long, table-like lists of programs and their relevant mitigations on the right. A table that is designed to be operated by PC mouse. You see everything, and you can quickly check boxes on and off. Very efficient, and you have a complete view of your software estate.

In the new "modern" interface, the equivalent functionality is shown in a touch-like interface. You don't get any meaningful information. One, horrible, low-contrast UI. Two, you don't see the full list. Three, you don't see the mitigations applied for any one listed program. Four, you must click on each entry, and then go through a dozen toggles like an obedient little monkey. Touch, touch, swipe, swipe, monkey, monkey.

What was wrong with EMET? Nothing. It wasn't "modern". So there you have it. Classic and efficient versus modern and stupid. I'm sorry, they call it a streamlined experience.Utter design failure.

Settings lacks functionality

Now, even if we ignore all of the above, even then, Settings is still a failure. Why? Because it cannot do half the things that Control Panel can! Very simple. Even now, a decade later, Settings is still functionality inferior to the old program. There's no parity. And therefore, there's nothing to discuss.

For example, how do you tweak a network adapter in Settings? The answer is, you don't.

You could argue, but Dedoimedo, normal people don't do this! Exactly! 99% of stuff in Settings AND Control Panel will NEVER EVER be seen, touched or changed by the normies. The ONLY people who will ever use system configuration are nerds, who prefer efficiency and speed and logic over shiny gimmicks.

What Microsoft did is a paradox - they designed a new interface for idiots, but the only people who need to use the idiotic interface are smart people. And so, all of this effort is entirely wasted, because it contributes nothing of value whatsoever to the quality dimension of the Windows operating system. It boils down to modern and shiny, like any toy.

Settings does have a bunch of options around data that Control Panel doesn't. The reason is an entirely self-made problem. Microsoft made its apps use data so you can have a "personalized" experience, but then, it also had to add toggles so the user could control (to an extent) this data usage. They could have avoided the whole thing by designing their apps not to be data-eating things like on the smartphone. Like the old programs in older versions of Windows, which didn't need Bing search, cloud, or any store.

Why would this even be an option? Unnecessary.

Why keep an activity history to begin with? Send it to Microsoft - jump back into what you were doing, even when you switch devices? Why? Who does this? Who needs this? Again, one of the myriad unnecessary smartphone-like features that have no place on the classic desktop.

Location? What? On the desktop? What? Who cares. But hey, smartphones! Data!

The really sad thing? All of the above WOULD have made some sense if Microsoft hadn't discontinued Windows Phone. I still have my old Lumias, the sweet 520 and the mighty 950, and I still love them very much. The best smartphone interface ever made. The most truly streamlined smartphone experience ever made. The Nokia/Lumia range of apps was fantastic, and still in many aspects, years ahead of what the competition does nowadays. If Microsoft phones still existed and were supported, then Windows 10/11 Settings could be useful and practical. But this? This is just someone unable to get over their own failure, and plodding on with low-IQ nonsense that has no benefit to the end user.

Lumia, I miss thee so ... What a camera, btw!

I hate the dark mode, anywhere, but Microsoft, once upon a time, managed to do a GREAT dark mode. Reasonable ergonomics. Then, if you look at Cortana (would-be AI), all of those things from back in the day, once, they kind of worked. Privacy, settings, toggles. Today, on the desktop, after they KILLED an entire ecosystem and left the Windows Phone in a lurch? Nope. Pointless, misguided, unnecessary.

Ergonomic travesty

When it comes to Settings, you don't need to go far. The pointless program, or rather app, does not even respect your desktop accent color. While other windows will have the top border painted whatever hue you have chosen, Settings will stubbornly remain gray (in light mode), so it's indistinguishable from background windows. Also, the fact foreground and background windows have the same "color" is another testament of ultimate pointlessness of this thing.

Just look at how awful it is:

You get "Rewards" up there (so you would sign in with a Microsoft account) - a system administration program behaves like something made for 5-year-olds. Rewards!

So much wasted empty space.

Ugly pale gray fonts.

In comparison, Control Panel looks like this:

But wait, you can use small icons or large icons! Customization!

Much easier and cleaner to see. The icons are vibrant. The text is readable. Functionality? Also better. Now, that does not mean Control Panel is perfect, or even amazing. If you want a nice, elegant system settings menu, take a look at what the Plasma desktop does. For example:

However, no matter how good or bad Control Panel is, at the end of the day, all things considered, it's still infinitely better than Settings.

How can anyone develop that thing?

I sometimes wonder, how can a person sit at their desk in the office (or home, whatever), and write a UI that they know sucks on every conceivable level? This isn't restricted to Microsoft in any way. Just a general observation. But then I remember what all big corporations always do. Every few years, they send their pesky, challenging veterans and dinosaurs into early retirement, and they employee clueless recent college graduates, (a term I despise), who are ambitious, terrified, obedient, and don't know any better. Tell them to write whatever, wrap it in some buzzword-rich slogans (like modern and streamlined), and you end up with things like Settings.

It is quite possible that Control Panel is a code nightmare. Perhaps it's a messy clutter minefield in the backend. Perhaps. As an end user, I don't care! I have zero sympathy for the plights of any which company and their profits. What I care about is functionality and efficiency. If a program (or an app) cannot do its job, it's a failure that should be catapulted to Mars.

Conclusion

Microsoft may be migrating Control Panel functionality to Settings, but what they're doing is, they are ruining decades of hard-won experience and usage patterns. And for what? For creating an inferior replacement. They are making system administration more difficult. They are making even simple things less efficient. Settings is ugly. There's no redeeming value to it.

They did the same things with Skype. Killed the old 7.X branch and relaunched the "app" as 8.X, and then it took months and months for the "new" and "improved" version to gain the exact same functionality its predecessor had. Well, most of it, because it still doesn't have it all. Even now, years later, Skype 8 is still not as good as the old version. The same is true of Settings, Windows 11 menu, and many, many other "modern" ideas. Just a pile of useless, inefficient nonsense.

I know you think I'm being sensational, bitter and whatever. You're wrong. The touchification of the desktop is a clear and present danger. The "modern" look cannot be disassociated from the "touch" stupidity. And touch cannot be disassociated from the smartphone-like usage. And this is what the corpo-drones want to do. They want to transform a PC, which is essentially a 100% local asset in 100% your control into a phone-like turd that they control.

Just look at how Windows has transformed in the last decade. Mandatory online account to set up the operating system, mandatory TPM and Secure Boot, cloud sync stuff, soon AI, perhaps a subscription, maybe an ad or two, hey, this is a long and steady process of transforming the computer from a tool for intelligent work into a shiny terminal for idiots, because idiots are profitable, and that's all that matters. Settings is a manifestation of this process. Every time you open it and look at its sad gray fonts and inefficient layout, remember what modern and streamlined means. If your IQ is above 100, you ought to be worried. We're done here.

Cheers.

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