Personal computing has stagnated for such a long time, it creates substantial uncertainty about what state it might evolve to if and when the next step actually happens.
In this respect local LLM's are simply the tip of the iceberg, pointing out the vast amount of personal information processing that is available in principle but does not actually happen.
One could argue that personal computing (desktop) software piracy lead to web-based SaaS subscription licensing. In theory, mobile app stores solved device software piracy, at the cost of high distribution fees, policy restrictions and telemetry.
Thanks to Linux being used at scale in Android and WSL, it's now maintained and capable on the desktop, as a hypothetical foundation for personal computing innovation. But even there, native GUI toolkits took a backseat to web and CLI. Remember Chandler? http://www.osafoundation.org/
Investors poured small fortunes into cauldrons of smart devices, wearables and AR/VR, with little to show as nascent ecosystems failed to achieve escape velocity, due to closed hardware and software that forestalled the experimentation which birthed personal computing.
Apple Silicon has reinvigorated walled laptops. Hopefully next month's derivative Qualcomm SoC from PC OEMs can offer good price/performance/watt for Apple-competitive-yet-open Arm laptops and tablets that can run any Linux distro, with retail SSDs and RAM, plus AI silicon roadmap.
A modular Framework Arm laptop would be a good start to rebooting PC innovation.
How does slightly improved laptop hardware relate to re-invigorating desktop software? Surely desktop computing has stagnated because most users are primarily or exclusively mobile users.
In Mac land Apple has been progressively dumbing down their interfaces, in Windows land Microsoft is more focused on extracting maximum value from their users than trying to meaningfully improve their platform. In Linux land there are some interesting things happening with Nix/Guix around declarative system configurations, and around Fedora with its layered images+Flatpak distros for making systems more reliable, and System76 may be doing something novel interface-wise with Cosmic marrying powerful tiling/tabbing window layouts with intuitive controls and the niceties of an all-in-one desktop environment. From my perspective desktop computing is definitely advancing, but only for hobbyists, not for mainstream desktop operating systems.
> How does slightly improved laptop hardware relate to re-invigorating desktop software?
If Arm SystemReady laptops with good performance/watt have an open security foundation (declarative, immutable OS at EL2) to support multiple competing "app store" equivalents on Linux, the resulting revenue and competitive market can reward innovative desktop software - open, closed or hybrid. Without an Apple tax on storage and memory, funds can be redirected to a competitive market of smaller ISVs.
> the resulting revenue and competitive market can reward innovative desktop software - open, closed or hybrid.
Outside of Steam, not a single software distributor (including Canonical) has been able to do this. Linux succeeds in spite of everything you mentioned and none of it would particularly enable the sort of experience you're describing.
Unfortunately so far Qualcomm was hard at work avoiding making an open platform ARM-based laptop/tablet - to the point of squeezing around MS rules on that through special drivers etc to make Windows think it's dealing with EFI-compliant hardware.
The main issue is that what's upstreamed is essentially drivers for the SoCs - but the firmware of Qualcomm-powered laptops tends to be not fully compliant.
So it's easy to make a device powered by one when you control how linux is booted on it, but for whatever reason things like EFI NVRAM interface on windows qualcomm powered laptops was done non-standard and the only reason windows works is because there are drivers shipped which work around it - and I seriously doubt its intended by Microsoft, because Microsoft actually benefits from devices following their official, documented, hardware-interface specs - it makes for easy upgrades, reinstalls, etc. etc.
In this respect local LLM's are simply the tip of the iceberg, pointing out the vast amount of personal information processing that is available in principle but does not actually happen.