As for whether humans “need” or “get used to” a Retina resolution, that way of thinking is backwards. The default state for humans is real world resolution (no pixels), or for text, the resolution of ink on paper (600dpi to 2400+ dpi). What we had to “get used to” was the unnaturally chunky, low resolution of displays from the first computers until now. Those Dark Ages are over and now we can enjoy computer displays that have the resolution they always should have. A 96 dpi monitor is not “normal,” it is as archaic as a dot matrix printer.
People arguing that hi-dpi is not needed just boggle my mind. The world is hi-dpi, all the way down to the Planck Length, the “pixels” of the universe. Why would you not want readable text? Why would you not want excellent graphics?
Status quo bias in action, I guess?
If it’s status quo bias, it’s a status quo bias that kicked in recently. Otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten this far. My first computer (1983) had 320×192 max resolution. No, I think it’s more likely to be the thing you complain about more than anything else in the present blog—the public’s belief that bandwidth is a scarce resource.
Yup. I recently started using a display that has a better resolution than a Retina Macbook Pro and now I can see the pixels even on my MacBook. 😐 What we get used to is shitty low resolution displays, not the other way round.