As a 30 inch Cinema Display owner, I did the math on it the other day, I think it's about 8000x5200 pixels at 326 ppi. I would pay whatever the cost for that.
For me, the real killer app of that sort of resolution would be resolution independence: current flat screens look crappy when you switch them to a non-native resolution, whereas with that sort of PPI you could get away with it - and you wouldn't even need a powerful graphics card, because the screen could appear as a lower resolution device to the system.
Actually, I think the screen tech is already there and it's really the terrible scaling support in OSes that is holding things back. Nobody buys high DPI displays because the experience of using one with Windows sucks. If it's true that iOS 4 automatically scales apps while improving text sharpness that will make it far more advanced than both Windows and Mac OS.
If you have nothing useful to add to the conversation, please continue to ignore these topics. I can only assume you believe that the DPI controls in OS X and Windows are actually useful, and to that I would say: have you ever actually tried to use them?
The iOS DPI controls are some of the most shockingly rudimentary and backwards of virtually any contemporary system, which is exactly why they simply doubled each axis' pixel count (then inventing some asinine "retina display" nonsense to try to make lemonade out of the teeny screen size in the face of better equipped competitors). To see someone calling it a model to strive to is simply shocking, especially on a generally more knowledgeable site like HN.
Windows has been dealing with resolution variance to much greater success since the early 90s. Seriously, by your claim, Windows XP would have been a revolution had it come with the new ability to target both QVGA and the exclusive new VGA functionality.
The iOS DPI controls are the simplest and most straightforward of any contemporary system, which is why they will likely actually work, in contrast to the OS X and Windows DPI controls which have never worked and likely will never work. I call that more advanced.
You are confusing resolution and DPI. Windows has been dealing with DPI variance by completely ignoring it since the early 90s, with the result that the physical size of interface elements varies with your screen's DPI, and high DPI displays are impractical. iOS doesn't have the option of ignoring DPI because in a touch interface the physical size of interface elements actually matters.
>The iOS DPI controls are the simplest and most straightforward of any contemporary system
But they're simple because it was a startling realization that the original design was shortsighted. The iOS platform has had a mere 3 screen attributes thus far, and each has been an essentially hard-coded hack specific for it.
It is not a laudable goal. They certainly didn't spearhead density-independent layout (and are more accurately one of the last to the party).
>and high DPI displays are impractical
In the workstation world people generally essentially placed their display based upon its DPI. A large, lower DPI display was wall mounted or placed at a greater distance (but serving more people), while a higher DPI display came closer to the user.
The iOS platform is not the best example of density-independent layout. It is one of the worst among the modern era.
My 24" display, at 1920x1200 (~86 PPI) is 2,304,000 pixels, and even with a moderately high end graphics card, it struggles under load. You're talking about a display with 18x as many pixels to paint (or, to put it in a metric more easily graspable, it'd be like running ~18 displays at 1920x1200 @ 86 DPI, across which a single frame would be painted.
Needless to say, I don't think that technology is going to be showing up in stores near us in the next year or two. :)
Black dead pixels cost nothing, but dead subpixels, or pixels stuck to displaying colour are very bad.
Even if adding more resolution makes you unable to resolve the pixels, you can still always see light, in the same way you have no hope to resolve stars, but you can clearly see their light.
Luckily once we get oled, it no longer matters, because there is no backlight and you can always set misbehaving pixels to black.
Despite your desires, at some point, those pixels will become too small for you to see at normal viewing range. They'd be a waste, you have 20-10 vision, or you'll be sitting far too close
