Your definition of what is a pulse is wrong. Think of a metronome with a steady count or a musician tapping their foot. The pulse or beat, as that is the proper term for this, is that steady idea. It may change slightly over the course of a song, but it won't switch every beat ever.
Since it is a steady, countable time event it is very useful to build music using it. 

In your examples, you have a _rhythm_ in a time signature of 4/4 nothing more nothing less. The pulse is not the notes themselves, but the thick black lines that each note start at. The first one is just straight quarter notes which is 100% in line with the beat and it's full duration. The second one you still hit on each beat, but the actual duration of the note is not as long as the beat which _does not_  affect the beat. You can even just have one note last the full 4 beat count which would be a whole note in 4/4.