Labour productivity vs wages doubled since the 1970s and the trend seems to be continuing. It was about 150% in 2000 so we can use Excel as as the benchmark.
This means that an accountant today can wait for Excel to load for 2 whole hours of their 8 hour shift, and still be as productive as an accountant from 20 years ago!
Isn't that amazing! Technology is so cool, and our metrics for defining economic success are incredible.
Just because an accountant can burn two hours a day waiting for the computer, doesn't mean that we should burn those two hours.
I think that most of the tech stack is there technology-wise, just not aesthetic wise.
If you are happy with how UI widgets looked an behaved on Windows 7, you can have sub-millisecond startup times now for many apps. Trouble is, people would rather wait and look at pretty things than have an uninterrupted workflow.
[1] You knew there was gonna be a "but", right? Why else would I respond?
I think the problem is there is no economic incentive to hire people that would make excel take less than two hours. If good enough gets you the sale, then why spend money getting anything more.