If there are any products in computing history that do not owe their success to the model you're describing, it's iPod/iPhone/iPad.

We got disintermediated with the very first iPod. Remember "less space than a Nomad. Lame!"? That was very much the attitude of the crowd you are describing.

I distinctly remember a pry-my-keyboard-from-my-dead-hands attitude when the iPhone came out. It's only benevolence that stops me from constantly reminding the "power user" among my friends that his first reaction was "Not even a stylus?"