It failed for multiple reasons, but a big reason was that they tried to outsource the hardware and basically just got reskins of existing gaming-PC prebuilds, which didn’t actually make PCs any less confusing. And they didn’t actually save money (and some were overpriced scams) so buyers were basically forced to do as much research as buying an actual gaming PC.
All of that will be solved, and the software/UX/other stuff you mentioned are far more mature, like you say.
Theoretically people could use it for a cheap non-gaming PC, except the cheapest non-gaming PC would be non-gaming specs.
Anyone using it for cheap crypto-mining is an idiot, the cheap option there is a rack full of bang-for-buck GPUs.
Are there any other use-cases that involve gaming-PC specs? Making videos, perhaps?
There’s no reason wizard hats can’t shield the face from bullets. In fact, in the later books there might be a hat that does basically that IIRC.
Besides which, wizard hats have wide brims. And they have scarves.
Shooting in the face where there isn’t cloth won’t necessarily help - if the hat just stop bullets aimed for the head (like a magical forcefield) then it’s pointless.
Also, it’s not gonna hurt like hell and bruise the shit out of them - you’re citing Newtonian mechanics when it’s fucking magic. Hell, maybe the forcefield just deletes the bullet instead of deflecting or blocking it.
“Shoot at it until it dies” is great advice generally, but if you shoot a water pistol at a fish then you’ll be there til you run out of ammo.