I think that people are just too fussy. I have anti-aliasing disabled on my 142 dpi laptop screen and it looks better in most applications provided that screen fonts are used. Yes, you can see the pixels and you get the odd rendering artifact. On the other hand, the fuzziness of anti-aliasing is a steep price for edges that appear smoother.
With HiDPI displays all over the place, is subpixel rendering really still a thing? Pixels have gotten so small, I can't see individual ones anymore even if I'm trying. They could leave out anti-aliasing altogether in fonts and I'd hardly notice.
Or I'm just getting old.