This is part of it - many things are "fast enough" that were you used to have caches that would display nearly instantly, now you don't have those - it reads from disk each time it needs to show the folder, etc.

This is very visible in any app that no longer maintains "local state" but instead is just a web browser to some online state (think: Electron, teams, etc). Disconnect the web or slow it down and it all goes to hell.