How about they get rid of the remnants of Win 95 UI which pops up every time you dig into anything administrative or system settings related? Would that be possible?
Maybe this is a sign im finally getting old.
Nope. You're just fine. The current MS is just nuts. Imagine the breaks, accelerator, wind shield, steering for cars change positions for each new model.
It wouldn't be your fault for feeling disoriented.
It's a trick. The Microsoft I know never - NEVER, ever recreates an existing software completely before retiring it. And they'll retire the incomplete replacement with something less functional soon after.
It will be impossible (or at least wildly impractical) to attempt to do this all at once. Iterative releases is entirely the correct approach to a problem of this scale.
Personally, I still prefer the old control panel but I also know it's a little intimidating for the average user. Having a mobile-phone like settings experience is going to b be less surprising for the majority of users.
Changing this stuff would be equivalent to burning an appreciable portion of the internet to the ground. Not even counting the work involved in updating the UI and ensuring that equivalent functionality was retained, the amount of documentation that would need to be updated gives me the willies.