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 Control Panel in Settings. And then to remove Control Panel entirely.

It’s a well-intentioned idea. And it’s hard to argue with the simplicity of having a single, clear user interface to configure system-wide settings.

But there are two problems.

First, Microsoft is using this transition to jettison older features and functions entirely. Like Windows Backup, which is currently listed as a “Windows 7” feature in the Windows 10 Control Panel.

And second, Microsoft is only partially implementing some Control Panel features—sometimes on purpose, sometimes it’s not clear—in order to further its own strategies.

And that’s where my example comes in.

As you may know, Windows has long supported the notion of default apps/applications. Among other things, these default app settings ensure that when you open a file, it opens in the right app. Key to this system is the notion of choice: You, as the user, gets to choose which web browser to use. And which apps opens word processing or graphics files.

To date, Windows 10 has supported both a legacy, Control Panel-based interface for determining default apps as well as a simpler new Settings interface. And while many would like to kill off Control Panel, this two-pronged approach actually worked great: You could use the childishly simple UI in Settings to make high-level choices for music and photo files, for your default web browser, and some other things. It’s perfect for the average user.

Or you could dive into the Set Default Programs control panel, which provided more fine-grained control. For example, you could select a program from a list—say, Google Chrome—and click a “Set this program as default” link and—get this—Chrome would actually be set as the default for every single file type that it supports. Not just some of them, which is what happens when you use the primary Settings interface.

I never complained about this approach because it worked. The power users who needed this could use the Control Panel. And doing so was a great tip I could write about in both Windows 10 Field Guide and on this site.

But now that is changing.

In the latest version of Windows 10, the “Set defaults by app” link at the bottom of Default Apps in Settings, which launched that Set Default Programs control panel interface, no longer does so; it brings you to a new UI inside the Settings app. And if you navigate to Control Panel > Programs > Default Programs > Set Default Programs, it now launches Settings. The old interface, suddenly, is gone.

So for this one feature, the Windows enthusiasts have gotten their way, ostensibly: Functionality that previously required the Control Panel has been replaced by the Settings app, leaving us one step closer to that Control Panel-less future we all supposedly need.

There’s just one problem. That new UI is terrible.

Remember that “Set this program as default” link I mentioned? There’s no such link in Settings. Instead, you’re expected to manually change every single possible file type, one at a time, for each app. I did this already for Chrome, but there are fully 21 file types that you can configure here, and several you’ll have to change manually if you choose to make Chrome your default browser.

Which is, of course, the real impetus for this change.

See, Microsoft doesn’t want you to have the same level of choice in Windows 10 that you used to enjoy. It wants you to accept its defaults, to use its web browser, and to make it harder for you to not do so.

And that, ultimately, is what is getting left behind as we race forward with Windows. Choice. It’s not about an individual feature like the one I outline here. It’s about the collective impact of these small changes to the choices we used to have, all being done (publicly) in the name of simplicity and evolution.

Consider what I wrote earlier about the dark side of “rapid release.” If you acquired a Windows 10 PC a year ago and just kept using it for 5 or 7 years under the old scheme, this interface—and many others—would never change. Windows would remain familiar and work the way you understood, for the entire time you used it.

But under rapid release, this interface—and many others—could change anytime. Or at least anytime twice each year. It doesn’t matter how stable or familiar you would like it to be. It’s going to change. And that change won’t always be for the better.

I feel like default apps is a good example of this, but it’s not the only one. For average users, especially, these kinds of changes are both jarring and unwelcome. And they will ultimately serve only one aim: To make users less happy with Windows over time.

Sometimes I wonder if this is the real goal, but I assume it’s the opposite of what Microsoft is shooting for. “Rapid release” is about making Windows better for everyone, after all. And I’m sure that it works. Until, of course, it does not.