At some point, when you have to go find the disassembler and start monkey patching binaries, some people will still say "but there's still a workaround!".
Reminds me of how Firefox removed the ability to set a URL for new tabs (the better to display advertising on them) but justified it by saying "Users can trust and install a third-party extension to enable that functionality."
That's a dark pattern, but even so, Windows is useful without the internet. App Store doesn't demand a data connection on a whim, it fundamentally needs it for all of its functionality.