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Perhaps the choice to transition into the cloud and streaming services is less of a choice by consumers and more of a choice by the companies what products they want to offer.Definitely. I find it that a lot of things in computing can be better understood if you realize that consumers have little to no meaningful choice. They don't know the possibilities, they don't know their needs, so they choose from what's available on the market. If companies decide the phones need to keep getting thinner, or software needs to move to the cloud, and then back that up with serious marketing expense, then people will follow - because your typical user understands so little about technology that their thinking works in categories of "what looks most hi-tech" and "what everyone else uses".
The trend of moving everything into SaaS is insidious; negative consequences aren't visible immediately. The first day you're happy you no longer have to install anything to watch movies, or worry about your hard drive space running out. But then, maybe a month or a year later, you find yourself on a trip, unable to watch a movie because of a spotty Internet connection. Or you lose the Internet halfway through your movie night. Or the movie that was there yesterday is gone today, because $reasons. Or you want to show it to your SO, who doesn't speak English, and you can't, because there's no way to add subtitles and the company doesn't offer the language you need. SaaS means losing ability to use capabilities of your computer, but you only find out when you actually need them.