It's all about the Software

He has a point about individual disables for spectrum and waterfall. But the nature of the GUI makes that a little awkward to achieve and still look nice. For a remote app this would make sense if he wanted demodulation at the remote location. I can imagine this as a little box in the bedroom that spends most of its life playing FM music and working as a clock radio.

On the other hand if he wants to listen to a box that lives in a remote location this sounds like a server application perhaps constrained to the local network.

{^_^}

Actually updating the waterfall / spectrum uses *very* little CPU / GPU, there's no noticeable saving.

They take a LOT of bandwidth over remote desktop or VNC.
{o.o}