The internet was a big part of it. Most home users did not have internet access in the System 7 days. When it came out in 1991 no country had more than 1% of its population with internet access. By the time Windows 95 came out around 10% of US users had internet access.

It wasn't until 2001 that the US reached 50% of users having internet access.

Without internet there wasn't really a good way to distribute updates to most users.

As a developer in that era working at a company that made software for PCs and Macs it was great. It meant that the way most users would get our software was buying it on floppy disk (or later CD) from a retail software store like CompUSA or Egghead.

We'd only make more money from someone who bought our software if that software made a good enough impression that they bought more of our software. We'd lose money if any software went out with enough bugs or a confusing enough interface or a poorly enough written manual that a lot of people made a lot of calls to our toll free tech support.

This was great because it largely aligned what developers wanted to do (write a feature complete program with a great UI and no bugs) and what management wanted (happy users who do not call tech support).

With internet giving us the ability to push updates at almost zero cost and as often as we want people who release incomplete programs early and add the missing parts in updates are going to outcompete people who don't release until the program is complete and nearly bug free.

Once you get there it is not much of a leap to decide that what you are really selling is not software to do X but rather the service of providing software to do X. Customers subscribe to that service and you continuously improve its ability to do X.