I think he's lamenting that the new hardware tends to come with (or mandate) the newer software, which is generally slower, but trades this slowness for nothing of value. That is, there is no legitimate reason that the same tasks should take longer on faster hardware; but (usually) the exact same software will tend to run faster.

I don't have this problem on my workstations (generally) except when I browse the web, though recently I've had to make the practical tradeoff of owning a smartphone, where this problem is rampant.

Worse than things not getting faster, the same product tends to get slower because the software designed for the new hardware is the only maintained branch, and the versions for older hardware are just backports from future hardware.