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I would argue that the telemetry, updates and theming are not major concerns for Windows customers because they can be addressed or simply don’t care, but I can see your point of view and in my opinion are legitimate (though not unique) downsides to windows.

I’m actually impressed with Microsoft’s dedication to unify decades of settings UI/Ux. it’s a commendable goal, and while I don’t deny I have had to lookup how to do something in the “new” way many times, I believe it’s worth in and end the end will result in a more logical and consistent configuration interface.

The problem is that they haven't unified decades of settings. They further fragmented the settings and made everything much worse. There are still many things you simply cannot do with the new settings app. Now there's several different places (control panel, settings app, policy editor, etc) you need to look to get any configuration changes done - and the next Windows update will probably revert your changes anyway! It's pretty user-hostile at this point.

Most of the settings reverts ars bugs not caught by Insiders. A volunteer test force is always going to be biased by the types of people willing to participate.

Personally, since a major Windows update or two ago I only have one settings panel I actively use that is still a Win32 dialog and not directly in the modern Settings app. That's the Environment Variables dialog, and being a developer/power user control panel I can see how that would be a lower priority to merge to the new Settings. Though it is still interesting to point out that the Environment Variables dialog was improved in Windows 10 over its Windows 7 counterpart.

It shouldn't be surprising to anyone at this point that Microsoft is prioritizing settings updates and merging settings dialogs into the modern app in priority order based on available telemetry of what's most commonly used. It never surprises me that most of the people still complaining that their pet settings that they care about haven't migrated to the modern Settings apps are the same that disable telemetry and complain about it. Microsoft doesn't know you are using that setting often if you aren't giving them the telemetry to understand that, it's pretty simple.

> Most of the settings reverts ars bugs not caught by Insiders

This is simply not true. Nowadays I have a freaking ps script to run after each upgrade, to set things back how I configured them.

> Personally, since a major Windows update or two ago I only have one settings panel I actively use that is still a Win32 dialog and not directly in the modern Settings app.

So you never had to use the Network Adapters window? I need that one pretty often, the new one in Settings is not adequate. How do you add or remove features from Windows, like HyperV or WSL? That one is also inside the old Add/Remove Programs applet (the features on demand in Settings app is a different mechanism, with different content and applications. Yay for consistency).

> This is simply not true. Nowadays I have a freaking ps script to run after each upgrade, to set things back how I configured them.

It is true: Microsoft has said several times in Insider blog posts that most settings reverts during updates are considered to be bugs, and if you find one the best place to file that bug report is Feedback Hub. If you care to see that corrected, I can only recommend you try searching Feedback Hub for your specific issues and filing them if you can't find existing reports.

> So you never had to use the Network Adapters window? I need that one pretty often, the new one in Settings is not adequate.

Can't say that I have a regular need for that, no. Most of my devices have only a single network adapter in active use at any given time and the modern Settings has been adequate for my needs.

> How do you add or remove features from Windows, like HyperV or WSL?

The last time I activated or deactivated either of those it was directly in PowerShell.

Average users don't really use those settings. Connecting to WiFi is handled by the new ui and that's what most users use. I'd say part of having so much telemetry actually helps in this respect for Microsoft to know what's used and what's not. Also for additional features even in the power user case is probably used once after a fresh install.

I think that’s largely valid criticism. I would say the fundamental problem of settings control fragmentation is the fundamental challenge at the heat of the windows project - it’s trying to be all things to all people. for example, the three examples you gave are each intended for different audiences (power users, non-power users, and the enterprise respectively).

I think my ideal would be for the new settings paradigm developed completely parallel to the classical settings interfaces. I don’t think it’s a good idea to deprecate classic settings, maybe not forever but absolutely not before you have parity.

I would prefer them to try and tackle whole host of issues before unified settings. Transition to a CoW fs (rip refs), separating configuration and state from the registry and more robust display scaling for starters. That said, I think settings fragmentation as-is is needlessly complex. And there have been real improvements in my opinion in some of the new settings ui/ux, for example the new per-application audio I/O control menu. The classic network properties and settings are truly awful, something as simple setting a static IP requires a series of dependant and uncloseable property panes that can’t be used (or even visible in some cases) while you are using a child of the previous pane. It’s been largely unchanged since windows 95, and in the past couple years I’ve liked where they are headed. I think that if they really can achieve their goal of a central, monolithic settings control interface then that would be a real value.

It's not as bad as described, in my experience any missing panels in the new settings have links to the old panels within the same contextual window.

> I would argue that the telemetry, updates and theming are not major concerns for Windows customers

This assertion is based on a false premise. It can be a concern, but people don't know how to address it, or are ridiculed for caring about something that is not readily provable (except in retrospect, if that).

it just tells us that the end users are not the customers.

and those of us who actually paid $200 for windows 10, are too small of a section of the customers to be heard.

They already did all that with their enterprise edition, but they don't market it much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_editions#Comparison...

Even with the somewhat limited pro edition, our IT is able to give us months and months of uptime for certain critical computers (i'm in biotech). Heck we have a W10 pro machine that handles building security and it has over 2 years of uptime.

The problem is the disconnect between HN and the average user who is dumb as rocks when it comes to tech. The average user expects the OS to magically take over the sysadmin duties. They just want it to be as simple and seamless as their phone - not an entirely unreasonable expectation given that the phone is sharing a lot of tasks that were only done on dedicated machines.

Kind of funny to say the security machine hasn’t been patched for 2 years

Yeah I know it’s badges not mission impossible security

For isolated machines it's not uncommon.

The process to re-approve a machine after a bloody update is painful(to say the least).

Even for something as lousy as a BMS system of a reasonable size (100 bacnet controller) will still take 1 week or more to fully test and approve. Keep in midn that these are machine where the only things that you can plug in are those whitelisted at the end of the test.

Even the approval to replace a keyb+mouse set takes a few days and requires a sys admin to go to site.

Heh, Yes on re-reading the comment it does sound ironic. :)

Our IT is not purposely keeping a security hole open to boast about uptime. If there was a security impact to our particular configuration/use-case, we'd patch it for sure.

It seems to me like poor diplomacy between two nations with a slight power imbalance. It should be about mutual trust and respect.

I have more power, I will use it. I have less power, what can I do, I'll just have to accept it.

I keep hearing about telemetry but how bad is it really? Doesn't macOS collects some as well?

I think it's very similar what macOS collects and what Windows does these days.

I don't know if macOS has a tool like this, but anyone curious exactly what telemetry Windows is collect, Microsoft provides a Diagnostic Data Viewer tool to explore it: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/diagnostic-...

There's a ton of documentation at this point on everything Windows collects as telemetry.

(Most of the same telemetry is in Windows 7, fwiw. A lot of the telemetry systems were added in Vista or XP. The biggest change was Windows 10 turned on a lot more of it on by default rather than nagging people to join the various "Customer Experience Improvement Programs" and consolidating all those opt-in/opt-out "improvement programs" from a half-dozen different nag dialogs to a single privacy settings panel.)

MacOS asks you about it in the OOBE (you can change your decision later in the System Preferences) and then respects your decision.

A novel concept, I know.