The usual reason for this kind of telemetry is to figure out which features users are using and which they aren't. That guides decisions about what to invest in, what can more or less safely deprecated, and can even help with promotions.
And with all kinds of telemetry they collected, they managed to create the pinnacle of UI/UX redesign, as shown in the Settings Panels in Windows 11, right?
People are weirdly attached to Control Panel. What's better: Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> Change Adapter Settings -> Properties on selected NIC -> IPv4 -> Properties to set a static IP or Settings -> Network and Internet -> Ethernet -> IP Assignment
People got used to where things were. That does no indicate good UX/UI.
I'm not sure that's directly on control panel so much as which windows version you pick to look at, over the years it's changed as they try to make it friendly to different audiences. In win2k it's not very deep to get at, by default there's network places on the desktop you can right click to skip a few steps. Similarly they could improve the win8+ settings app but presumably they think win11's version is the best they can offer.
The problem is that this doesn't let you configure X detail about the NIC, most users don't need to ever configure that so they don't have that option in their updated control panel. The problem is that sometimes people do need to configure X, Microsoft can't just say to people you can no longer configure X, if it's a necessity for some use-cases. Their solution is to just leave the old legacy control panel software laying around forever for those situations. And that's bad UX/UI and bad for security, to leave this ancient unmaintained code on everyone's system.
Just because of incompetent modern design department "simplifying" everything to a point of unusability. Is windows supposed to be used for serious applications or is it just a consumer product for tech-illiterates? Microsoft doesn't seem to know. Why can I even buy a "enterprise" or "professional" version, this is clearly not intended to be used by me.
What is the X in this scenario? What do you need to configure that's not available in settings? I absolutely do not doubt there's _something_, but I bet it's not an every-day sort of thing, and I'm absolutely sure it's not something that was outright removed. If anything has been removed in a version of Windows it's always been able to be restored either via registry or by CLI. And in the case of CLI, that's what Linux users ask for anyway, so I'm not sure what the issue is.
Then why the fsck gets in my way ? Why 1px borders when i have to resize windows ? Why no place on the titlebar when one can click and drag on second monitor ? Why the stupid taskbar where some windows are hidden and others not. Why the stupid alt-tab where it rearanges the window stack ? Why ?
Speaking as someone who has had to implement their own chrome in Windows for aesthetic reasons, this is on the developer for not using the standard chrome.
> Why no place on the titlebar when one can click and drag on second monitor ?
Not trying to shame, but I assume English is not your first language. I'm having a hard time comprehending this. It seems like a complaint about dragging the title bar? I would assume this is another non-standard chrome issue.
> Why the stupid taskbar where some windows are hidden and others not.
This again is something that's up to the developer. It's definitely frustrating, but I would argue it's only more prevalent in newer versions of the OS because there's just more software out there. This is also an issue of developers making choices that go against proper UX/UI.
> Why the stupid alt-tab where it rearanges the window stack ?
Alt-tab has always been FIFO. It's always been based on "What's the last thing you had in the foreground"
So you're saying that decades of telemetry have shown to Microsoft that users increasingly want MORE and more telemetry and no way to turn it off?
I find that hard to believe.
And that users would like the start button to move to the center, the settings config GUI to change completely on every OS release and settings to be in 4 different places and that users don't want more than 1 taskbar row (win 11)? lol, yeah nahhh...