Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you doing that you would even notice? Honest question. I can't recall a single instance where my 2012 rMBP slowed down due to its age. I mainly code, open tons of browser tabs, and listen to Spotify. Once I got a laptop with built-in SSD, everything just seemed to run at the speed of thought. That has not changed in four years or three operating systems.
Not everyone is a webdeveloper that has to link some pngs into some text file and MAYBE batch process some images. There's people with heavy workloads who notice. I really don't understand that attitude. "Because I don't need it, nobody would need it."
I do compute heavy stuff but from time to time but it's the sort of thing that would slow down the new chips just as easily as the old. But on average, a laptop from four years ago handles everything I can throw at it easily. If you purchased computer hardware at any point during the 90s or early 2000s, that's amazing.