> I refuse to believe at current high end intel/amd levels (i7-9 & ryzen 7-9) & even mid-range that lack of responsiveness is due to the CPU rather than windows/mac.

You are right, of course, in that the fault lies with software. But holding the software as constant, the only way to improve responsiveness is to up your core speed and IPC.

It's not as if the average user can email Microsoft of the Chrome browser team and ask them to make the OS/Browser more responsive for their older hardware. But they _can_ go to the store and buy a faster CPU, most of the time.

The situation was probably reversed a few decades ago, when hardware was actually expensive and multi-core was not a thing.