Technology

Missing the key point though... your general concept is absolutely right... it's failed over and over again because it can't keep up with the fact that it's cheaper and better performance with what you can buy locally, on top of bandwidth access etc... But there's 2 ways to make one product a more common option, option A, try to make the one you want them to use better, but with AI they've done something different, they are working towards making local systems worse.

Key point is, the direction of attack. Instead of making remote compute better, cheaper, faster etc... what if the attack is make local hardware, more expensive, harder to get, less reliable, or even illegal.

Right now, all of that is happening, on top of course of windows being more bloated, hardware costs are multiplying at a rate never seen before, even for outdated hardware. Netflix and spotify have already adapted the public into no longer buying physical medium for movies and music, and as people are also noting, governments making more and more regulations come in place on say OS's needing age gates, 3d printers needing to report to the government etc... It's literally an orchestrated perfect storm to be pushing people away from owning computers.

The point is they aren't trying to "catch up" to local hardware, they are trying to hinder the ability to obtain local hardware.