They were business tools! Omgurd! You’re just trying to get kids addicted to media!
It’s pretty fascinating being older and watching these arguments repeat themselves.
In case you haven’t noticed, political life is all about ownership. You’re sold disposable garbage on a cadence by people that own the machines that make it.
Your agency was sold to suppliers. Computing as a system of doing has matured.
And purchasing, well, it's the lesser of evils these days. Purchasing at least gave you vitually cart blanche access to software on your computer with time limits imposed only by processing architectures.
Now, in contrast, everything is moving towards subscriptions. 1Password. Microsoft Office. Photoshop. Sublime Text (professional). Apple Music (or Spotify, et.al.). Apple TV (or Netflix, et.al.). Novlr (a word processor).
All expect me to shell out anything from $1 to upwards of $50 a month in perpetuity for the right to borrow their software. And that's not even mentioning microtransactions, for things like alternate brushes in PS.
I'm with you on this. And not just because of the reasons you listed. Everything surrounding computers has become so focused on making money that it really, really bothers me. There isn't a single thing on my computer anymore that hasn't been optimized to the n'th degree either to weasel more money out of me (F' you, Apple TV, Apple Music), or built in a way which optimized as much money out of the process as possible (F' you, Mozilla, every single one of you Electron apps out there).
We've become so utterly focused on money and optimizations that the fun and value has been sucked right out of the software - both front and back.