> Was literally just transcoding some video, playing a podcast, and browsing the web.

Yeah that's the perfect use case for current system design. Nobody sane wants to turn that case into an embedded system running a single process with hard deadline guarantees. Your laptop may not be ideal for controlling a couple of tonnes of steel at high speed, for example. Start thinking about how you would design for that and you'll see the point (whether you want to agree or not).