[quitit]

It's probably a bit counter-intuitive for the "if its not broke don't fix it" crowd. But lifting the rug and revisiting ideas is pretty central to how they operate over there.

The logic probably follows that if they were developing these settings panels anew, would they be different from one another, or should they be the same. Somewhere along the line they've realised keeping things consistent inside their ecosystem is simpler for their users, and the reasons for keeping them different are outweighed by the advantages of having them operated similarly.

This might be hard to believe, but I find some people are confused merely by the iOS app being called "Settings" and the macOS app being called "System Preferences". One is a hang over from earlier mac days and the other is a simple one word title that describes the app succinctly. It's not a surprise that they're both named Settings now, similar to how macOS and iOS apps have been slowly getting renamed for consistency (e.g. Address Book becoming Contacts.)

I think people also forget that it takes quite a bit of work to rejig apps, especially ones this central to the OS - so it's not exactly something I would describe as a lazy effort, even if it does produce more manageable code in the long term, which of course has invisible user benefits such as less bugs and faster deployment of security fixes.