I wonder if these kind of hottakes happened when Sony closed down all their stores (and Sony has more physical products as a hardware company, too).
Fact of the matter is these companies don't need their own stores when mega-corps like Best Buy do better jobs selling their products without them needing to invest in a physical location. Apple stores are an outlier but even still I see it more as a presence thing because Best Buy sells WAY more Apple products and has better logistics to do so.
It's not a hottake, just a fact. You have a very US-centric view of things...
Take Apple as you said, they release a new MacBook and you can pretty much buy it online anywhere in the world, this strengthens their physical stores and retail power.
MS can't even sell their products online outside US and UK, it is literally impossible for me to buy a Surface Studio where I live through Microsoft. You can check it out:
Explore os produtos e serviços Microsoft para sua casa ou empresa. Compre Microsoft 365, Xbox, Windows, Azure e muito mais. Encontre downloads e obtenha suporte.
www.microsoft.com
How do you expect people to buy your products if don't even make them available? But I guess they just don't care, that's not their primary objective as a company nowadays.