I’ve definitely turned into the paranoid nutcase within my friend group in recent years, I hate that everything is “smart” nowadays requiring an app/internet connection & account, just to do basic things that didn’t require any of that before.
What’s some things currently making you ramble like an old man?
There is a good reason for it, and that’s saving money. Computation on the user’s device is free, doing it on the server/cloud costs money.
Serving static files that’s cached in the browser, and providing a thin API layer is cheaper to host and might be worth it on the long run.