Sure, in all the bloat there's new functionality, some of it even useful. But if you just take a simple, well defined task, like starting a program and loading

Sure, in all the bloat there's new functionality, some of it even useful. But if you just take a simple, well defined task, like starting a program and loading an appropriate file (any photo editor, Excel, Word...), I would expect it to load instantly. If our hardware has sped up 1000x, couldn't the software limit itself to slowing things down only 500x instead of 2000x?