Comparing with a super-fancy Apple display doesn't seem that fair. Even today "1080p" monitors are not uncommon - for example the popular Dell XPS 13 defaults to a 1080p monitor. Also worth noting that 2560x1600 (the resolution of that monitor) is identical to the original Retina display.

If people really care about 16:10, it's available with reasonably good specs and they can buy it. If they don't, it will probably die permanently, but we can't exactly blame the market.

So the thing that a lot of people miss is that unless you bascially 4x the pixel density and go anti-aliased... it doesn't actually help to increase the density when regarding reading.

The thing I've learned is that really I want a specific pixel per inch real world or I want a specific font size in inches real world. I sit comfortably back and the dell 30 lets me easily set my text at about 1/8" tall or 1/4" which is super easy to read relaxed in my chair. If I went for a increased resolution display, the font would just get smaller until I get to a 4x density... and I'm not really gaining anything until then either when AA smothing is a win.

But also since I jack my font up even more than usual for my distance.. I'm already anti-aliasing about 4x AA, so a 4x resolution bump would put me at 16xAA which is, I don't think, needed. I'd rather blanket my field of view with lots of large text than have one very nice high density display central that makes me lean forward and strain my eyes.