This is a really good point - when you are using a machine for long periods quality of life items matter. Companies know this and unfortunately use it to make people upgrade by allowing/introducing obsolescence over time, either with OS updates or through lack of upgrades for perishable components (eg, battery-gate where phones were being throttled).
We’ve talked about a number of these things over the years (including in Dimi’s thread on DT) such as (as per that comment) Affinity apps beginning to take an eon to open. When I first got the machine apps opened practically instantly, but over time started taking over 30 seconds to over a minute (on my M4 mini they open instantly again - wonder how long that will last!?) Similarly, closing Safari tabs started taking over a second! And as Dimi mentioned even opening system settings became laggy. Knowing there is a likelihood of this can push people to upgrade or opt for beefier specs, more so than a new computer taking less time to do a computationally intensive task, such as applying a photoshop filter (most people won’t care if a newer machine takes 10 seconds less to carry out a task that they are not constantly doing - but they will care about all the other much more frequent QoL items that add up through the course of the day).
Even aside from the above, it plays a role in initial purchase too: more RAM = ability to open more tabs, larger files, run more VMs etc, better GPU often means ability to run multiple monitors or the ones you have more smoothly (see my comments about the laggy animation above), better CPU helps with compilation speeds, working with image files or graphics programs etc. Can you do the same with a less beefier machine? Yes, but everything will be slower, laggier, and less pleasant to work with.
Hence beefier machines aren’t just for items that ‘need’ beefier machines (I.e where you would be unable to do those things without that machine) they also help with everyday quality of life, and if you spend a lot of time on your computer, that can make a big difference.
