Lots of old school desktop applications are built in a way where they query a server for every single query result/item detail page/etc. Practically every industrial application for boring things like warehouse inventory is like that. That's not "local-first".
Let's take Excel as an example: Excel as a desktop app is either local-only (editing a local file), or remote-only (editing a file on a shared network drive). Excel as it has existed as a desktop app for a long time is not local-first.
An email client using IMAP, fetching mail ahead of time and having a queue of outgoing mails, is local-first.
Let's take Excel as an example: Excel as a desktop app is either local-only (editing a local file), or remote-only (editing a file on a shared network drive). Excel as it has existed as a desktop app for a long time is not local-first.
An email client using IMAP, fetching mail ahead of time and having a queue of outgoing mails, is local-first.