This take is common, understandable, but at the same time mostly just cynical and I think misguided.
First, application launch times have to do with storage and memory speed over raw CPU power. So, without knowing your exact specs, I can’t tell you if your launch times for your new and old machine are actually a problem, especially if you’ve upgraded your older machine to an SSD or if your new machine still uses a HDD for its main drive.
Second, I simply don’t believe you that it takes a full three seconds to open gnome calculator on your new machine. Or your old one, really. (It makes me want to ask the annoying question: is Linux that bad? My Mac or Windows machine has opened the calculator instantly regardless of the era).
Finally, this is actually the most important point: capability of your computer is still miles ahead of what it used to be. Try playing 1080p video on your 2004 machine. Now try 4K.
Maybe you say that high resolution video isn’t important. I don’t agree, but fine, let’s move on:
Browser performance is another hugely important aspect where your 2004 machine will get smoked. Sure, you can remain cynical about websites getting “bloated,” but you should also realize that almost all business applications and some seriously complex general purpose applications are all moving to the web. Things like video conferencing in a browser window were a pipe dream in 2004. Microsoft word used to be considered a big complex and slow application, and now multiple competitors just run it right in your browser.
This is a very good thing for interoperability and for making your Linux system actually useful instead of having to jump on your Windows partition every time you want to collaborate on a Microsoft Word document.
You may not like Apple machines but step into an Apple store one day and play around with the cheapest M1 MacBook Air computer. It has no fan, doesn’t get hot on your lap, and the battery lasts 15 hours. Yet, it beats the 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro that is still the most current model on some benchmarks - a machine that is hot, loud, heavy, and will give you probably 6 hours of battery at best with the largest possible battery that’s legal to fly with.
I think the long story short is that software developers leveraging the hardware is actually a good thing. It means that our capabilities are increasing and developers have less friction, so they can deliver more complex and useful functionality. As long as UI latency is within the acceptable range, allowing developers to build more complex software and focus on functionality over performance optimization could be argued to be a very good thing.
In 2004 a developer would struggle to make a decent cross platform application with rich functionality. Something like a chat application with embedded media would need to be written three times to cover three platforms, and I’m still not aware of any chat app in 2004 that had a whole application and webhook ecosystem. The most important part about a chat application is for it to be interoperable! Now you’ve got Slack, which is practically a business operating system. Rather than being annoyed about that I think we should be impressed.
(I also disagree that gaming is just a niche use of hardware. That’s an industry with higher revenues than movies and sports combined).