Just the spinning rust turning at 5400rpm seems like that would have been all but impossible. With modern NVMe devices, waiting for data to load isn't really a bottle neck. At 1200MBps+ speeds, we had to span 16 7200rpm drives in RAID-0 to get close to that speed.
With all of that, it does feel wrong to have to wait for apps to load. How much of that is the calling home to validate the app has been signed?
Most applications and games launch in single-digit seconds. I don't recall this being the norm in the Windows 95 days either.