I think the question is who are MS making windows for, and possibly where they're getting rewarded for spending their efforts (who gives them money for windows)

I think the question is who are MS making windows for, and possibly where they're getting rewarded for spending their efforts (who gives them money for windows). The challenge as I see it is 'GUI windows' must serve a very wide spectrum of users from those that just want to use it as an appliance to just launch an application, through various definitions of power user up to workstations for full certified professionals, and I think it's the middle of the pack that really lean on control panel/settings. Appliance users probably never or extremely rarely touch settings, and professionals can take to it like ducks to water if they're using it at all compared to another interface. While I can appreciate some motivations behind what MS do with windows such as security, things like this seem like they're pushing the emphasis more towards appliance and cutting away the 'personal computer' which (without any more research than a wet finger in the air) I think would account for that 'middle of the pack'. What really bothers me is if it's taken them 12 years since win8 started their movement in this direction to get to the current state, how long will it take them to complete the change, let alone come up with something clearly better where no one would want to use the classic control panel. MS don't give the impression they have the capability or drive to execute that promptly. It seems more likely they'll just remove any mention of control panel from the UI/explorer, but leave the .cpls available unless they cause issues.