I feel like there are people who look at their devices and people who look at what's displayed on their devices.
For me, text is text is text. I'm looking at it, not so I can enjoy how crisp it is (or isn't), but so I can consume those words and get them inside my head.
I find (I've played around with high DPI devices) that while they do look nice, the niceness is quickly forgotten when I actually start using them for something other than looking at how nice they look. Likewise, going back to use lower DPI devices you notice the difference, until you stop looking for it and actually get work done.
I'm not saying that I don't care entirely, I just... I wouldn't go and buy a new device solely because its resolution was higher. It will be nice when these devices eventually make it to me, but I'm not really bothered either way.
If we were to talk about recent revolutions in the home computer I'd rank multi-core CPUs as a much more important change. No longer can one broken app go on a rampage and block you out.
Anyway, tl;dr; it's great he's passionate about it, I just don't see it as such as important thing.
You might get a majority of people to agree with you, but I've never met anyone for which this was actually true. It's just the first-order approximation, without having quantitatively studied the differences that can exist with text. Text is not interchangeable, and seemingly small differences severely impact readability both in speed and accuracy.
Displaying text is the primary function of my computer, and the most important aspect of my computer. I want that tiny subset of the human population who are finely attuned to text to get it right for me. It's far more important than doubling my RAM or doubling my CPU performance, these are commodity and trivial compared to the hard work of getting text right.
>No longer can one broken app go on a rampage and block you out.
Minor quibble, you don't need multi-core for that, since preemptive multitasking this has never happened to me.
> So more pixels is great. Is it really that great?
If it reduces eyestrain, then it is worth every penny!
I don't know if there is any evidence that it does, but it certainly seems likely that sharper text would reduce eyestrain. I certainly can read tiny text on my Retina iPhone much more easily than I could on my previous iPhone.
Otherwise, it's worth it if it gives you enough more joy, and not if it doesn't.
Some people are fine with music played through stock earbuds, and other people find music more enjoyable played through hi-fidelity equipment. Some people prefer the food at McDonalds and some people prefer 3-star Michelin restaurants. Some people think their old SD CRT TV is fine, and other people prefer 1080p HD. The people who like the former things may never understand why other people will pay more for the latter things. YMMV.
> Otherwise, it's worth it if it gives you enough more joy, and not if it doesn't.
That's the point. For many people it just doesn't matter, they can't tell the difference without focusing on it.
I'm typing this on an HP dv6 laptop that I really like. It came with the hardware I wanted at a price I was willing and able to pay. Does it have a retina display? Hardly. But considering my eyes are shot: it's night-time now, my eyes are tired, and I've taken my glasses off to give them a rest and the text on the page is ever-so-slightly blurry at this distance, having a retina display wouldn't do me much help. I can't see the dots at it stands anyway.
My eyes are shot too, but I find that the sharper text on my Retina iPhone is a godsend. I find that the sharper the text is, the easier it is for my aged-vision eyes to focus on.
Also, even if many people don't care about the difference, I think that this is a great advancement. Imagine if all the books and magazines were suddenly reprinted using pixelated fonts. Do you think that people would be happy with this? Do you think they would say, "Doesn't really make a difference to me"?
No, of course not. People would be rightfully outraged! A decade from now, everyone will wonder how we ever suffered with pixelated screens for so long.
The issue is not that many people don't care about the difference. The issue is that many people do care about the issue! The near-future move to sharp text on computer screens will be a wonderful thing for them, and it won't be a bad thing for anyone else. (Modulo pricing differences, which I suspect will rapidly approach zero.)
I have an iPad 3 and an iPad 2. The "retina" display is certainly a nice upgrade but it's hardly essential. This is obviously where the industry has been heading for a while and the only thing interesting about it here is that Apple's supply chain dynamics makes it possible for them to get 6-12 months ahead of the competition.
Some text looks like crap on the old screen (iPad 1), with visible aliasing and color fringes - making zooming absolutely required for reading. Not so with the retina display.
Anyone who has used one of these knows they're awesome, and that words do not do it justice.
I think at this point, Grubber just needed to commit that entry to the historical record as a member of the top tier of Apple reviewers/fanboys/critics.
I think its disingenuous to imply that because someone doesn't notice or care about the increased PPI of a laptop, they don't appreciate the small joys of life.
ok replace 'the small joys' with 'some small joys' the point is still the same.
It's similar to what John Carmack said when he was testing out the Rift VR Headset with Rage.
He said he was fascinated in just looking at the bricks in the walls and being able to 'look around' objects in the world, which gave him a new appreciation for all of the art assets that are for 99% of people just a blur as they run past shooting monsters.
I find myself a million times more "productive" in Sublime Text 2 with a "light" theme (Soda Light) than previously when it had a dark theme (the default one). I do look for substance, but we are all machines and can't fight over our limitations. My eye thanks me when it can visually see an "orange" function instead of having to look for a "black" (i.e. misspelled) fuction in code. It's not my fault - eyes appreciate semantically color-coded (or typeface-coded) blocks of code/article/etc (my last sentence is poorly phrased, as a non-English it's hard to articulate what I want to say but I'm sure you understand what I tried to say).
Catching resolutions up to print DPI is not "style", it purely a quantitative exercise.
The screen is the only component of computer hardware that we use at full capacity all of the time. It is much more important to get displays up to print resolution than a small clock speed increase.
But legibility changes any and all text, and a better display means better legibility (or at least the potential for it). Like mattresses and office chairs, I believe in investing in screens given how many raw hours of my life and attention are given to them.
Don't forget about data visualization. The dense display is great for time series work (even a small, 1000-point time series can overwhelm a standard-density laptop display), or for image analysis.
Of course, the great-looking text is certainly a plus as well.
I feel like there are people who look at their devices and people who look at what's displayed on their devices.
For me, text is text is text. I'm looking at it, not so I can enjoy how crisp it is (or isn't), but so I can consume those words and get them inside my head.
I find (I've played around with high DPI devices) that while they do look nice, the niceness is quickly forgotten when I actually start using them for something other than looking at how nice they look. Likewise, going back to use lower DPI devices you notice the difference, until you stop looking for it and actually get work done.
I'm not saying that I don't care entirely, I just... I wouldn't go and buy a new device solely because its resolution was higher. It will be nice when these devices eventually make it to me, but I'm not really bothered either way.
If we were to talk about recent revolutions in the home computer I'd rank multi-core CPUs as a much more important change. No longer can one broken app go on a rampage and block you out.
Anyway, tl;dr; it's great he's passionate about it, I just don't see it as such as important thing.