And on top of that, I'm sure the "LLM pod" will still be sold on a subscription model so you get model updates etc.

But I wish we could actually have nice things. I imagine there's a niche for a middle ground: a privacy-preserving device that uses local-only models and doesn't spy on the user, and sells for a one-time payment with no subscription. It'll be expensive, though, likely more expensive than using a cloud-hosted model.