I used My 2011 MacBook Pro yesterday, and my son used his today.
Your Mac can still do everything it could do when you took it out of the box running 10.6 Snow Leopard or 10.7 Lion. And likely a whole lot more because Apple has provide many updates in the intervening years.
if to no longer meets your needs, that is not something Apple has taken away from you. That is because your expectations have gotten bigger, and your computer may not be able to be expanded to meet those enlarged expectations.
¿what exactly do you need that your current model Mac can not provide?