Pretty sure 4 gig RAM was common consumer level then, but I take your point. I think the average consumer user became rather less affected by the benefits of increased RAM somewhere around 8 and that let manufacturers get away with keeping on turning out machines that size. Specialist software and common OSes carried on getting better at using more if you had more demanding tasks to do, which is probably quite a lot of the people here, but not a high % of mass market computer buyers.

Honestly I think the pace of advance has left me behind too now, as the pool of jobs that really need the next increment of "more" goes down. There might be a few tasks that can readily consume more and more silicon for the foreseeable, but more and more tasks will become "better doesn't matter". (someone's going to butt in and say their workload needs way more. Preemptively, I am happy for you. Maybe even a little jealous and certainly interested to hear. But not all cool problems have massive data)