skuid.model.updateData() deprecated? Really? How else can we query multiple models in one function?

We’d really like to understand what ability was lost.

For funsies, I ran a query in our Production org finding PAGES (not number of usages) of:

skuid.model.updateData : 68 pages affected
skuid.model.save: 29 pages affected
skuid.ui.fieldRenderers: 38 pages affected

I just ran these three.  So this adds up to a ton of re-work for us.  Hence asking the why.