Whilst I would prefer the ability to use Roon without internet access, mainly in the event of internet outage rather than me taking my core to a location without internet access, it’s now apparent that this isn’t going to happen as Roon moves forwards.
Danny, and others, have made it clear that a cloud based approach is the way forwards and I think for good reason. One of the constant criticism of Roon (on this forum) is that it is very hardware dependent. Everybody’s hardware set up is different and this causes a huge problem for Roon. How many times have we read “can’t use Qobuz/Tidal on Roon but can on their native apps…”? It’s clear that Roon wants to bypass some of these problems by moving things to the cloud. This allows a far great uniformity of provision and access.
It’s clear that Roon has foreseen that this, along with the issue of no longer supporting older hardware, will cause significant problems for some - hence the provision of 1.8 Legacy. 1.8 Legacy provides a solution for those users who don’t want mobile access, but do want to use Roon offline. It also provides a solution for those who dread “update time”!
Now, the big issue is how long Roon will support 1.8 Legacy. This clearly depends on the number of Legacy users (see this post). If you want to use Roon as it is then, the more people that download and use Legacy, the more likely it is to be supported further into the future. But, as with all things Roon, Roon provide and support what they want to provide and support - it has ever been thus!