There's been a fair bit of research on this. People don't like slow interfaces. They may not necessarily _recognise_ that that's why they don't like the interface, but even slowdowns in the 10s of ms range can make a measurable difference to user sentiment.

And yet even Amazon, eBay, and Wikipedia don’t see value in building an SPA. Chew on that.

SPAs, in practice, tend to be slower than well-done conventional/old-fashioned webapps, and, particularly for Wikipedia-type applications, have all sorts of other usability concerns. Like, which feels more responsive, wikipedia or some random SPA?

Presumably they would if there were significant performance benefits of SPAs.

Most regular people buy a new phone when their old one has "gotten slow". And why do phones get slow? "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away."

In tech circles regular people are believed to be stupid and blind. They are neither. People notice when apps get slower and less usable over time. It's impossible not to.

And then they spend their own money making them faster, not linking the slowness to the software, but to some belief their hardware is getting worse over time.

> Most regular people buy a new phone when their old one has "gotten slow".

Uh...

If this statement were true (IF), it would be even a better argument for software developers to NOT optimize their apps.

The big problem is that most of time users do not have options. Very often there is no better performing alternatives.

Apart from when it is optional consumption say games.