Ah, the old "It doesn't suit MY use-case; so it is IRRELEVANT to ALL!
The problem with your dismissive attitude is, you are talking about a market that, while fascinating, is not where Apple wants to play. But you are right that Apple fully-understands what it takes to play that game. That's why they have all but killed-off anything even approaching that sort of market. But it is a wise company that chooses its markets carefully, and then concentrates their resources thereon.
That is where it is going. Business above a modest size are going to have server rooms. They are going to have IT staff, or a contracted IT support vendor.
I am on the IT staff of my company, and I support OTHER IT staffs for other companies. That is what I DO, and I have been doing it, as one of the only Apple-friendly and knowledgable technicians around, for more than 15 years... and I have been supporting macs since I was in school, long before that, and grew up with an original 1984 mac in the house since it was introduced.
I work in a company of 20 staff people, not 200, not 2000. TWENTY, and we have VM scalable infrastructure. The server and network infrastructure is there regardless of whether we would use VMs or stand-alone workstations.
The question is: Does there need to be a whole additional set of high-powered workstation infrastructure to support at the same time.
The answer is... NO.
I don't have to deploy, support, upgrade, maintain, and keep spares for 25-30 workstations in various facilities, in case any single one fails and loses it's configuration and it's locally stored data. I keep a few monitors, keyboards, mice, and a couple of almost-zero-config thin clients that can be swapped in an hour or less, while the staff member works on their VM at an adjacent desk, or in another office, without major interruption.
Instead of the last PC tower replacement I did for another company, where backups, troubleshooting, replacement, spin-up, and information systems software re-installation and data migration was 13 billable hours, spread over a holiday weekend of my time, and a staff member of that company, because it was mission critical for monday morning business.
That labor alone, between me and their in-house staffer, cost that company more than the PC workstation hardware.
Think about it: For every person like you that can fully utilize a distributed processing environment and IAAS workflows with "thin clients" (oh, how many times has THAT idea come and gone?!?), and the support-staff to set it up and keep it working smoothly, there are literally about a MILLION people (no exaggeration!) that are more properly served (no pun) by a traditional desktop or laptop workstation. And yes, it IS wonderful that macOS is actually a Certified UNIX (something that Linux will never be!), and continues to be a solid, no-nonsense, SECURE OS under-the-hood; but that doesn't mean that it is any less relevant because your Mom uses it to keep up with her sewing-circle. I think you would agree that an Azure instance or any other IAAS would be EXTREME overkill for something like that. But there is still a need for something that is a bit more than an iPad Pro, or maybe even quite a bit more than an iPad Pro. And quite frankly, those use-cases FAR, FAR, FAR outnumber those like you have described above.
Setup is a bigger project. Support afterward, especially with remote access... is orders of MAGNATUDE less time consuming and costly. I have already provided an example, even for a small business with only a few users.
Not to mention much more fault tolerant and less likely to lose vital data, if done correctly by someone who knows what they are doing.
BTW... Mom and Pop keeping up with their sewing circle, or their fishing trip pictures, or checking email... is done on a mobile device now, not a full computer... and if so, it is merely tradition and habit, on a computer they bought at a big box store, including the MacBook from Best Buy. That market is already served, mature, and fading away from full-boat personal computers, to easier, friendlier, more portable, more versatile tablets and smart phones. Apple has that covered.
Businesses that produce things, be it service, product, or content, from machine parts, to IT services, to architecture, engineering, or construction, to cultural entertainment material... is all production, and it all requires computing power, and that is where Apple is losing ground every minute of every business day, which is 24/7 for some industries.
That computing power is in a server cluster, or a server farm, not on a desktop. If you are installing desktops for that, you are on the trailing end of the obsolescence curve, and you are selling your customer a dying infrastructure that isn't even close to future-ready.
It isn't my use case. It is the state of information systems and information technology. Network bandwidth is expanding faster than microprocessor power is... and it is allowing microprocessor power to be centralized, virtualized, redundant, and scalable, in an infrastructure location BUILT for that.
My company just installed a new data center, because of that fact, and that demand.
It's just two different worlds. Neither one is better; but it's going to be a LONG time before all the secretaries of the world are going to have a thin-client on their desk, with all the "real work" being done on some AWS or Azure server-cluster somewhere.
Oh, and talk about "Lock-in". THAT's Azure!
Two different worlds... yes. And apple isn't in the one growing. They are in the mobile world that is reaching maturity, and they are in the old PC world that is fading into the past. In-home computing is being eaten alive by mobile devices, and dirt-cheap Walmart PC hardware for anyone who is too stuck in their PC habits to learn to use an iPad... which in itself is ridiculously easy to learn.
Business is the only other sector, regardless of what business is being done, including creative content production.
BTW... every secretary, and every staff member in our company has been on a thin client for years, and the support time on those machines has been cut by 85-90% since we left standalone PCs behind.
I would love to be able to tell our executives that we could have an environment MUCH better than Windows and AD/Azure/O365 to offer... but there isn't one, because the single largest-cap company in the world chooses not to move their better OS environment into that market space, to better serve the business customer, and better serve their bottom line, even just by HOLDING a percentage of marketshare, rather than losing it.
I have to ask, what part of 3-mode variable use cases seems locked in to you?
The traditional stand-alone PC mode, that Apple is already doing right now with every Mac OS computer, that you seem to think they are doing so well with, on outdated hardware, and good hardware designs that are never-the-less many years old. The general form factors haven't moved since the cylinder Mac Pro was introduced.
Or is it the thin-client VM host mode... which Apple is merely trying to emulate with Handoff, and other cross-device synchronizations... (which could be part of a Virtual-machine, Virtual-app, cloud-based burst-sync comprehensive methodology to distributed computing.)
Or is it the back-end support of that:
The VM-host server mode in a scalable product line, from home/small office, to medium server cluster, to large multiple distributed server cluster arrangements? With software that just works, modern and scalable hardware, and can be managed more easily by IT staff or by business owners/operators/staff without taking them away from their primary work... because the Mac OS X SOFTWARE is good, before Apple lets that fall by the wayside completely, too.
This is setting up for Microsoft to be un-challenged in pushing Mac OS out of what small business and production inroads they've had, because Mac OS is tied to out-of-date, expensive, and unserviceable equipment, and make Apple a non-presence in business. I came from the higher education sector in IT... if Apple has no place in business... they will lose their place in education, as universities are teaching to the business sector's needs. I am seeing both sides first hand.
Do you want Apple to be an iOS only company? Because this (the way things are going now), is how Apple loses it's professional computing business. The same way it did before Jobs came back... Apple didn't serve professional computing, and lost their shirt trying to chase what little was left outside of the workplace.
The only difference now, they aren't just competing against Windows PCs for consumer-grade computing sales. They have established consumer-grade migration to iOS mobile products, and pushed themselves and Windows OS further out of consumer-grade sales marketshare.
Go try to buy a consumer-grade PC tower. Go see how many fewer variants of laptops there are, and how many are ready-built, not built-to-order... and windows models that are selling at prices barely above where Netbooks used to be before mobile OS devices eviscerated that market in just a couple of years.
