Most of the "client"/desktop software does the same things that it did in 1997. Most/all of the 'advanced' features such as AI/voice recognition are done server-side because reasons.

If the quality of desktop software was going up, it would be doing more than it did in 1997. I don't think it does, in fact it is being dumbed down to look like mobile software (which is inherently lower quality due to limited UI). So how come the quality is going up but the user benefit (i.e. time it saves) has not changed?