In the car industry this is the case because there is a direct incentive for the company to make a vehicle lighter.
A single kg is enormous likely saving tens of dollars per car, which sounds like nothing, but if a million of these cars are made the cost saving are in the tens of millions.
What does a software company save by their software running 10% faster on user hardware. Exactly nothing. In the case of apple they even have some incentives to make their software worse to get people to buy new devices.
The curse of software engineering has always been that there is very rarely a reward for your software being better. Software companies mostly make it on features and "good enough" stability.
>Users are keenly aware of the lag modern programs have, even with top spec new hardware.
Which is always a combination of many factors.
I do not believe that you can market performance to anyone but a niche audience. The metrics are often difficult to comprehend and do not mean much. The one industry which does this is gaming and they usually do not go above giving specs at which a certain graphics quality at a certain frame rate is achievable.
I do not see how e.g. productivity software could be marketed like this. Except for unverifiable claims about "good performance".
To be honest, I do not think most users even care. They are annoyed at it, sure, but they will use what they have always used.
A single kg is enormous likely saving tens of dollars per car, which sounds like nothing, but if a million of these cars are made the cost saving are in the tens of millions.
What does a software company save by their software running 10% faster on user hardware. Exactly nothing. In the case of apple they even have some incentives to make their software worse to get people to buy new devices.
The curse of software engineering has always been that there is very rarely a reward for your software being better. Software companies mostly make it on features and "good enough" stability.