I agree. The age of hardware performance gains papering over software optimizations is definitely over. The developer world has to get used to it.

People also run a lot of code that "compiles" (not strictly converting to binary). Transpiling js, packaging assets, or just running spec suite. Any small performance we can get is much appreciated and over 2-3years will add up to something significant (justifying a large cost, which I never had a problem paying the Apple premium price).