What Gets Left Behind (Premium)

As Microsoft evolves Windows 10 in fits and starts, it is at times replacing legacy user interfaces. Which in many cases work much better than the new UIs.

And that, folks, is the price of progress.

Depending on your perspective, Windows 10 is either a train racing down the track, with two major feature updates per year and far more regular quality updates, or its a lumbering ocean liner, unable to quickly change direction. Oddly, both comparisons fit: Windows can change quickly. And it can be quite old-fashioned too. But the changes that Microsoft institutes can often be jarring, regardless.

Back in the day---by which I mean, before Windows 10---the impact of product version change was generally only felt when customers acquired a new PC. That's because most stuck with whatever version of Windows came on their PC, and because post-RTM updates rarely brought major functional changes to any given version. So even if Windows was upgraded every three years, most users experienced change ever 5-to-7 years.

But in the "rapid release" world of Windows 10, change can come at any time. Users who might have previously ignored or been ignorant of new Windows versions over several years are getting new Windows 10 versions twice per year. Whether they want them or not.

That's a big change from the past. And when you combine this new reality with the impact from quality updates that arrive at least twice per month and always require reboots, and the updates to Windows 10 apps and Store apps, which could be updated at any time, even every day, then it gets even messier. The system just isn't in a stable state anymore, especially to the average user. Even over relatively short periods of time.

I've discussed this sort of thing a lot, and I assume that most readers are at least passingly familiar with the dark side of "rapid release." But here's something I suspect that few tech enthusiasts have ever worried about too much. In fact, I'm concerned that Microsoft doesn't worry about this enough either.

And that is, in our collective desire to move forward, in this case, to evolve Windows, we're losing some important interfaces from the past. And these interfaces actually worked really well. In many cases better than the interfaces that are replacing them.

Allow me to provide one good example. That just happens to be tied to a weird desire of most Windows enthusiasts, that Microsoft completely removes the Control Panel from Windows 10.

Control Panel, as you know, is a legacy user interface in Windows that dates back over 20 years, to Windows 95. It was part of a mid-1990's user experience change that saw Windows drop the "manager" interfaces of the past and move to the taskbar/Start-based desktop interface we still use today.

Anyway, with the Settings app in Windows 10 improving steadily since its humble beginnings in Windows 8, Windows enthusiasts have been calling on Microsoft to fully consolidate all of the functionality from...