Can't answer for them, but: lots of us are older and need glasses. To really benefit from your preferred resolution would mean tiny fonts that give me eyestrain. It makes sense for a phone or tablet held close up; for a monitor a meter away it mainly just increases the expense at every level (including video ram and bandwidth). OTOH more area is worth spending more on.

I use a mac, so it would run it scaled. Apple likes to call it Retina. Makes text look as clear as if it were printed on paper.

While I would prefer to have a large and HiDPI display in the future, unscaled 4k was more economical and has fringe benefits of not needing special setup/handling. I lost $5-6k with my failed Dell and am hesitant to spend a lot again since it was supposed to be a decade purchase.

Thinking back the only other monitor I've ever lost was a Dell as well.. including 30 years of CRTs and CCFL LCDs never had any issues with other brands :(

I never owned a Dell screen, but I once had a Dell laptop and it was built like a tank. My brother had a 27" LG monitor from back when 27" was the biggest and best you could get, wasn't even 4k back then. It just died one day, probably the back light. I had a 24" CCFL monitor that actually never died, just got dimmer and dimmer every year, after about 5 years it was about half as bright as it was new.

Today I mostly use my 16" Macbook, which is quite close to being 4K. I really enjoy the HiDPI and the 120Hz refresh rate, makes it hard to use an external monitor since you can rarely get a HiDPI and high refresh montiro.