>people are perfectly happy to put up with slightly slower software for all of the other benefits we get from modern software
I don't think this is true. I think this is more of a 'boiling frog' situation. Increase the temperature one degree at a time and it won't jump out of the pot.
Every individual piece of software slowly eating up more resources is something the user barely notices or doesn't even attribute to the software in question, but give it a few years and everything grinds to a halt, and people very much dislike this, hence the infamous 'Windows rot' that everyone has suffered from at one point of their lives.
I don't think this is true. I think this is more of a 'boiling frog' situation. Increase the temperature one degree at a time and it won't jump out of the pot.
Every individual piece of software slowly eating up more resources is something the user barely notices or doesn't even attribute to the software in question, but give it a few years and everything grinds to a halt, and people very much dislike this, hence the infamous 'Windows rot' that everyone has suffered from at one point of their lives.