How do you reconcile your comment with the fact that computers were used productively for decades before the invention of 1080p and larger formats.

Approximately the same way we reconcile with centuries of scribes being productive with quills and velum?

We also have decade of studies showing that one of the best ways to boost productivity is to give people more screen real estate. This was true in the 80s, it was true in the 90s, and it didn’t really seem to plateau until something like 5-6K displays. The only reason people didn’t use bigger displays back then was due to the cost — a friend’s dad ran a prints go in the 90s and he really benefited from a display big enough to fit a whole page legibly, but that and an 11x17 printer cost enough that he needed a small business loan to buy them. He could justify it on productivity grounds but most people just accepted the hit.

Do you have links to any of these studies? I'm curious since it does not align with my personal experience, I find myself most productive on my single 720p screen -- perhaps I am missing something?

It varies from task to task, and operating system support is a confound, but basically it comes down to how often you have to scroll or switch windows to do whatever you are working on. For example, a print designer might do best with a single monitor large enough to hold the full document they’re working on at comfortable resolution while a programmer might be limited by having their editor and something like a debugger, browser, simulator, etc. simultaneously usable so two monitors might be better than one big one until it’s so big that those all fit.

https://www.jonpeddie.com/news/jon-peddie-research-multiple-...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1375718

http://infovis.cs.vt.edu/oldsite/papers/Shupp-HCI.pdf

Because decades ago, applications didn’t waste anywhere near the absurd amounts of screen real estate that they do now.

Look at how much you can fit onto a 1920x1080 display running Windows 2000 compared with a recent release of GNOME.

Screens got larger and higher resolution, and UX engineers decided we should fill the extra real estate with white space because...reasons? Because they're trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator that finds more than 3 elements on their screen confusing?

Bring back skeuomorphic design. Make buttons look like buttons again.

Happy 1080p poweruser and gamer here.

I get to spend less and still play any game at max, and I can actually run 2 instances of some heavy games for local coop using Nucleus (Nightreign specifically).

I use Niri as my desktop environment on linux, zero need for 4k. My screen is 27'' since 8 years ago when i bought it