Okay, I'll chime in here...
I guess I'm a bit jaded. Every time I see Minecraft touting the "newest and greatest update" I sigh a little and think, I've had that functionality and better since 1.6.4 modded.
A furnace that smelts things faster? Yawn. Give me a Blast Furnace any day.
New water mechanics that make sorting systems easier? Cough*pipes*cough.
Special Biome specific villages? Been there, been done better (I'm looking at you Witchery for 1.7.4!)
New mobs like the Illager and the like? Sigh, let me know when you put a new boss in like the Gia Guardian fight, or the Chaos Dragon, or update the mob AI to something smarter than that slow moving stepchild that no one talks about at family reunions.....
Look, I'm happy for people who don't play modded. Hell, I run two servers, one DW20 1.12 and one Vanilla 1.13.1. I just have a hard time getting excited for Vanilla updates because I've been so spoiled by modded.