[gschizas]

> The older cmd.exe console

You are confusing cmd.exe with conhost.exe

The console is conhost.exe. Conhost (Console Host) is the same kind of program as Windows Terminal, iTerm2, Konsole, Ghostty or Linux Console (the console that Linux uses on text mode)

The shell is cmd.exe (Command Prompt). This is the same kind of program as PowerShell (powershell.exe or the cross platform pwsh.exe), bash, zsh, fish etc. It's also similar to any TUI program such as Far Manager, mc (Midnight Commander), lazygit etc.