Why don't we have this with computers? Surely we're depriving Lenovo and Apple of such revenue if we use the computer and don't pay a monthly fee? This whole sub thing is nuts.
We do, it's basically Google and Apple's business model with Android [1] and iOS -- they're just better at hiding the monthly fee.
[1] Yes you can have non-Google subscribed Android devices, doesn't mean that Google is banking on all but an insignificant portion of users doing that.
This has already happened in the workplace. A lot of offices have computers that are 'thin clients', meaning they run a very minimal, locked down OS that only lets them connect to a cloud-based Windows environment, managed by an IT vendor like Citrix.
No data is stored on the company hardware, it's all in the cloud.
[1] Yes you can have non-Google subscribed Android devices, doesn't mean that Google is banking on all but an insignificant portion of users doing that.