The equivalence is valid for evaluating noise levels or dof. It isn't to predict the perceived quality of a picture or if it is pleasing to the eyes or not.
Most MF lenses are f/2.8, f/4 or slower. Still people prefer the MF rendering to FF or APSC rendering even counting that thanks to f/1.4 an APSC body does as much shallow dof and low light gathering as an MF system.
Another example if that people will not always shot wide open with their f/1.7 or f/2.4 lens. They shot at f/8, even for portraiture where the standard is not candid but more studio shots where f/8 is much more likely to be used than f/1.4.
Shallow dof is only usefull when you can't manage to get together an interresting foreground and background. Even if that mean that background is an uniform color;
If shallow dof was all, people should just all buy used 5D + f/1.2 or f/0.95 lenses. But this is just a very specialized, one trick pony thing.
Some poster here compare various camera and ask you to look at 100% crop. But that another completely irrelevant comparison in most cases. If you do not do a wall sized print of the image and go to stare at it from near distance you'll not see the added sharpness of MF.
But you can see a the difference in overall image rendering looking at it in full HD (2MP!) or less. To me this is more how optics render and how fine tonal graduations are reproduced in a pleasing way than any dof or sharpness measure.
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