If you're on a MacOS platform, with the current price of HiDPI IPS displays, the time is right to grab just about anything. If you're on Windows or Linux, it's still a great time so as long as you're keeping all monitors the same DPI and probably integer scale.
Well, the vast majority of the people consider 60hz totally acceptable for work - and work fine with it.
For the huge majority of the people refresh ration > 60hz isn't even a concern.
Better resolution on the other hand is a marked improvement (either as more screen real estate or as finer detail retina style).
But isn't that more for quick moving stuff, like games or (in the iPhone) quicker visual response to pen input and such?
For regular computing (reading webpages, editing stuff, programming, watching movies) I don't see much of a difference.
Heck, movies are 24p and we're fine with it.
Check out iPad Pro devices with 120 Hz display. It makes a big difference in readability of scrolling text (try to read a web page while it's scrolling), responsiveness and smoothness of motion.
The ones that do already have "Hi-DPI terminal windows and really sharp text" as an almost-mandatory requirement.
Think about it. Sub-pixel text rendering (and AFAIK it's just text, not images w/ subpixel positioning? although that's an incredibly interesting idea for a hack!). Maybe subpixel vectors/lines?
Either you care about high-quality lines or you don't... what Apple's basically doing here is moving the cost to the hardware instead of the software, and the win is simplified, faster, less-energy-using device.
I'm not personally agreeing with Apple's decision, I'm responding to your disbelief that "hi-dpi is the norm". It's the norm for anyone who primarily uses an iPhone. It's the norm for anyone using modern MacBooks (don't make me source my dates on retina displays). It's the norm for "executive" users (ie: software developers, graphics users, finance, book editors, etc.).
If you're happy w/ a bog-standard 1080p output device, then obviously you're not "in search of" the best quality text you can get.
However, thinking it through, I would _really_ like then a "subpixel mode" for either the OS as a whole (kindof like an FSAA?), or especially certain windows. Maybe there's a way to do that as a hack?
True, but not being in search of the best quality doesn't mean that any quality will do.
I've been happy with text rendering on my bog-standard monitor so far. I'm not sure I will still be happy after this degradation.
But as it seems my current Mac Mini is the last of its kind anyway and I'm going to have to move on from Apple.
That's Apple's market, not people holding on to 10 year computers. Not even those that still buy the MBA.
They are not. But I guess the point of the parent poster is that Apple require its customers to spend on latest items instead of supporting old tech.
Basically, it is saying: If you can't afford this, don't buy it. It is fair given that Apple products are already marked up in price.
Historically 16:10 monitors have had the same width as 16:9 ones (e.g. 1920×1200 vs 1920×1080) so there's no difference as far as having things side by side.
Regardless of that, if all you're doing is General Business™ then surely all you need to do is grab an all-in-one box, shove as much 3rd party ram in it as will fit & then nab a couple of monitors and an unbranded mechanical keyboard off amazon.
I did a lot of work on a £700(~$900) Optiplex with 16gb of ram and that was more than capable of running ubuntu on 3 monitors while being small enough to fit into a handbag
Are they? Nearly every monitor in my company's mainly mac based office is a 1080p dell. All the monitors I personally own are 1x.
I would even go so far as to say that the majority of people who want to buy a monitor for doing text based things (ie business) will buy a bog standard monitor.