I'm going to second this....
To me "ProRes" vs. h.264 can be analogous to 4K vs. 1080p. Or "more data vs. less data." As mmarian stated, the former is great for processing. But if you're just viewing the footage (not grading) or just uploading it to YouTube or doing minor editing, compressed h.264 or h.265 is "plenty good enough."
While the 4K craze has been awesome for production, at the end of the day, everybody is watching movies in 1080p. And you know what? Reasonably high bitrate 1080p looks pretty freakin' fantastic. Is it perfect? No. Yes, some of us notice the dithering of those sunsets that our girlfriends, parents and friends don't, but those artifacts are a small price to pay for a 2GB file vs. a 20GB file.
My girlfriend and I purchased a 4K television for Christmas a few years ago. I've seen MAYBE three or four films in 4K resolution. For all the extra overhead of processor power and storage space, the difference in video quality is negligible. In a nutshell, we don't really see in 4K. There are lots of interesting YouTube videos to support this:
That said, I CAN see the difference in quality if 1080p video is SHOT in 4K and PRESENTED on a 4K television. It's counterintuitive, but subjectively I can say with a fair amount of confidence that 1080p films (that were obviously shot in 4K) and shown on my 4K television look absolutely stunning (dithering and other compression artifacts aside). But it's worth noting that, by design, lower bitrates can and will exasperate digital artifacts. The best way to avoid these super low bitrates is to simply make sure your film's file size is at least 1GB/hour of video.
Is there use for shooting 4K? Absolutely. Is there use for ProRes or RAW? Absolutely. For some things I do, I wish I had 5K or even 8K (someday). Having that palette is amazing. But for simple YouTube videos or corporate presentation videos, well-processed, compressed 1080p video rendered from 4K footage is VERY "acceptable." Not to mention the advantage that 1080p video will play on marginal machines (including that 10-year-old iMac). The same can't be said for 4K video, which CAN choke on some machines.
D