I don't need any of those things tho. Mostly what I need is decent IO throughput which was unnecessarily constrained on earlier pis by poor design choices. The pi4 is the first to really shine in that regard.
I have a pi2 and I used it as a libreelec media center, and it was Ok in that capacity, but it's far too slow to transfer larger files regardless of how you do it (all relies on a slow usb interface).
Idk about everyone else but I was fine with the specs. A basic Linux machine that can hook up to the network and run simple python scripts was plenty for a ton of use cases. They didn't need to be desktop competitors. The market didn't need to be small form factor high performance machines, and I'd argue it wasn't.
They still sell the old slow ones don't they? from the website:
"Raspberry Pi 1 Model A+ will remain in production until at least January 2026"
"Raspberry Pi 3 Model B will remain in production until at least January 2028"
etc etc.
If you like pain, go get yourself a rpi1 lol. As for me, idk... I'm drawn more to VMs and containers which can run very well even on a 2011 tower pc (with few upgrades over the years).