Comment by flomo
Not to defend the new System Settings, but the old Preferences app was some 1999 iMac CRT stuff. Everything crammed into different tabs and sub-dialogs, (and secret tabs and sub-dialogs), just to "keep it small". Some of the panes had 'character', but it really was not a good UI on modern systems.
Calling it some 1999 iMac stuff is fair, but in that case it was replaced with some 2007 iPhone stuff. I’m not so sure that’s a step forward for a desktop OS.