As for reading e-mails and so on, yeah, we've pretty much reached peak e-mail.
I think people fall into the trap of conflating "this is what I do with my computer" with "this is what my computer is for." Obviously if computers are only for doing the things you can already do with them, then they won't benefit much from improvements.
Just use your imagination a little bit.
Unless you think your current workflow and the tasks you use your machines for are the pinnacle of what an individual will ever be able to accomplish?
Currently there are so many things that are so computationally intensive that they can only be processed on server farms that only the Googles and Amazons of the world can afford.
Both computers are extraordinarily fast, but I still spend a lot of time waiting.
I would be willing to spend a lot of money:
(1) to reduce that time, (2) to significantly increase my laptop's battery life, and/or (3) to significantly increase the size of my laptop's already-rather-gargantuan 8TB SSD.
Maybe I should become a programmer. Sounds like there's less waiting :P
It just seems to me that we are hitting a point of diminishing returns in terms of CPU performance because honestly, the speed of my laptop could triple and it would not noticeably affect my experience in any way.
The main areas of improvement that I would actually notice are better battery life, and faster RAM and SSDs (faster networking as well)