I might even take it a step further and say no product should be rendered unusable without an Internet connection unless the Internet is an absolute requirement

I might even take it a step further and say no product should be rendered unusable without an Internet connection unless the Internet is an absolute requirement of the product’s basic function. I.e even IoT devices ought to be able to be air-gapped and on their own closed network (unless, for instance, it’s a clock or something and relies specifically on things like weather/traffic APIs). And even in cases where there is a legitimate product feature that requires an internet connection, not having one should NOT render the other parts of that product unusable.