Plesk does work properly, it is a shortcoming of IIS not Plesk that it can't use .htaccess files.
The IIS answer is use URL Rewrite rules in web.config, most websites support this now(WordPress).
You have never been able to use .htaccess in IIS, so not a Plesk problem. If you want this...
You can purchase Helicon Ape to enable mod_rewrite functionality in IIS. Your end users wont even know its not an Apache server as they still use .htaccess files like on Linux. Ape just invisibly does its thing to interpret the files.
Latest Update 12.0.18 Update 12 appears to have removed PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5 from my dropdown under hosting settings.
The only PHP that is left is PHP 5.3
Yet, the updates and upgrades page still lists PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5 as installed.
Also PHP is still working on the virtual websites...