That's true, but it's probably a lot harder when you've proven to be untrustworthy in what you include under "modernisation" or "updates".
Plenty of techie people warned that user-hostile behaviour like the GWX campaign or including non-security things in updates advertised as security patches would damage that trust and come back to bite them later. I think a lot of people didn't really believe that would be the case at the time, but as the article here notes, the adoption rates suggest otherwise.
The only people who actually suffered were the OEMs, who didn't get to sell new PCs to all those people whose old PCs got a new lease of life.
I am one of those holdouts, however I would have upgraded a long time ago if Windows 10 had allowed me control over upgrades/updates and had better privacy. After the tricks that Microsoft pulled, trying to force me to upgrade to Windows 10, I do not trust Windows 10 and you cannot feel that about an OS and install it.
There's also a billion and one "one click privacy fix" tools like TRONscript, etc.
The future is more-or-less-continuous updates based on telemetry. That's how Google and Facebook work as well. Microsoft will never go back to a 3-year upgrade cycle, and no business should want to do that either.
Apparently Misrosoft has said that they do want to drop the old-style control panel eventually. I realise it's a huge job, but it feels very like a half-finished feature right now.
back in 2002 I went around bumping everyone's screen resolution from vga in college because it hurt my sole. at least 20% of people got pissed at me for "fucking up their settings". Almost all eventually came back and said "I can't read my whole doc, show me that thing again."
Point being they didn't even know it was broke or that they could change it. Thus you have iOS where apple's defaults are the whole OS and literally millions upon millions of people are completely happy with it.
(disabling "enhanced pointer precision" is preferable, but optional)
If your cursor is too fast you need a mouse with a lower DPI, and vice versa.
I can only guess how many proprietary extensions have been built to rely on the old Control Panel interfaces, and how few of them will ever be updated to Windows 10.
Life is hard when you have 1.5 billion users, especially when a lot of them resist attempts to modernise or even update the system.
Do it all at once, they'll complain bitterly. Do it gradually, they'll complain bitterly. Don't do it at all, they'll complain bitterly. Which complaint would you like to make today> ;-)
On the good side, ordinary users have few problems with the Settings app, and it seems to do all they need -- or at least it comes close.
And the people who are resistant to change and are already familiar with the Control Panel can still use it.