But if that progress doesn't make the native experience any faster, what's the point?
Well, you have two kinds of progress. One is native speed, which has been heavily sacrificed for the other option: features. Rather than let everything get blazing fast, we've gone for adding more cool new things, like voice recognition. All those new features require processor time, and do more to advance computing then 'faster' does.
that is a point, but a point I disagree with. I would rather have good experience now.
Adding on, to another person mentioned, "if you reserve CPU to the OS, it would make third party apps slower ..." In a sense, reserving CPU for the OS might speed up hardware progress then.