Very strange. I've got roughly 40k photos and Immich runs just fine on i5-6xxx old minipc with 8 gigs of ram. Migrated to Immich a couple of years ago from Photoprism (which was fine as well, I just prefer the UI of Immich).
>but it felt like they didn't value it enough to give
I still feel like this.
>It doesn't feel rude if somebody breaks out their phone mid-conversation and starts scrolling for a little bit.
And I do not agree about this either. Also, I think most of the people I spend my time with would also agree. But perhaps I'm (unfortunately) an outlier.
Computers definitely do not seem that important for young people of today. They can get quite far by using phone with a few apps (social media, browser, etc.) Not that I think this is a good thing, but simply my observation.