Local first is often just plain the better technical solution. E.g. you put a pin on a map to mark the parking spot, and want to share it with somebody standing right next to you. But it does not work because the connection to some data center 1000 km away is flaky. This is just plain bad design. Or you want to print something or get two machines to interact. Any remote third party you bring into this interaction is…
In developing nations, we often don't even have good internet. Uploading a 20 MiB file to Dropbox may fail a few times. But these days developers often forget these kind of situations.
It is also an issue in developed countries as soon as you leave the cities. And factories are often in rural areas.
E.g. in Germany, as soon as you leave the big cities, the options are atrocious. I live in a very rich and touristy village in the German alps.
I get 50 mbit/s DSL, which is actually just 25mbit/s down because the wires are so bad.
For comparison: in rural Romania, I get gigabit fiber to the premise for an eye-watering 10 EUR / month...