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Since Vista? I swear they have so much legacy tech some menus are an archaeological expedition into the deep past of XP and even earlier
Try doing anything with cab files. A few years ago I managed to open a menu from windows 3.11
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When I set up a screensaver on my Win10 PC, first of all, the same screensaver from Win9X still ran flawlessly, and second, I think the config panel for it might have even been identical too?!
But random split between Settings and Control Panel, Win9X/XP style panels and... whatever they call Win8/10 style panels is jarring to say the least. It's like they couldn't, at any point, have had someone go through all that shit and just make sure it's all in one place? Go through all the built in OS panels and make sure they are the same style? It's just bizarre, and feels like there are entire teams who's jobs this should be just... not doing it.
They can and have been doing that over the last decade. It's just a nontrivial amount of work and not a high priority.
In addition to WhiningCoil's complaints, I'd point out how badly what they've done as updates and upgrades has gone, where they have done any work.
If you have access to a Win11 machine, compare the old network configuration interface with the new one. There's an absolute ton of space for improvements and better usability, here! And they've skipped almost all of it; even ignoring uncommon (but not exactly rare!) things like handling multiple IP addresses on a given physical interface: why does it only accept IPv4 subnet masks in (bastardized) CIDR notation (without a combobox wtf?). Worse, if you used dotted decimal notation, why does it just give "Can't save IP settings. Check one or more settings and try again." without explaining what error or even highlighting the 'wrong' entry?
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That's a bad excuse, and you should feel bad for making it.
Almost everything worth doing is a "nontrivial amount of work". If your excuse to not to do something is "it's a nontrivial amount of work", I'd question how you make it out of bed in the morning, and how often you shower.
Second, it's self evident it's not a high priority, because they haven't done that "nontrivial amount of work" in ten fucking years. The point I, and everyone else is making, is that it should be a high fucking priority.
I'm pretty sure if someone like Steve Jobs was anywhere near that team, he'd have had the least productive member of that team ritually castrated and blood eagled in front of the rest of the team after the first year where it hadn't been done. After the second year he'd have taken all their fraudulent timesheets, used a hydraulic press to form them into the shape of a cyclopean dildo that would make a bad dragon enthusiast swoon, and spitted the next person on that monstrosity.
This is work than any sane person understands needed to have been done, and done over 10 years ago before Windows 8 came out.
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It's absurd, the split between "settings" and "control panel" is one of the stupidest things I've ever experienced from a company that prints money and has infinite resources
In windows 11 right click a file, get one style, click more options, get a second older style is bizzare.
In some menus you can go 3 generations deep from a win11 menu to an win 7(ish) menu to a ~win 95(ish) menu in successive layers. So ridiculous.
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Microsoft's focus is on corporate users with remotely managed machines. They don't put much energy into the home user who goes into Control Panel on his own.
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