I think the reason we haven't heard many complaints about the doing away of physical media is exactly this. As long as power users can make their own offline media, there's nothing to complain about.

It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still ...

Macworld explains how to create a bootable USB macOS installer using the createinstallmedia Terminal command for system recovery and clean installations. This tool is essential for downgrading macOS ...