Bill Gates made this same promise when Windows 1 was released. That each monitor and printer would require drivers specific to their model in order that the fonts would be measures in points (or pica) instead of in pixels.

Somehow we ended up with all the drivers for each device even though the original promise has been long forgotten.

We sacrificed the days of the plain printer with Centronix hardware interface, and the versatility of the Unix lpr spooler where you simply sent a stream out to printers containing control codes you knew would work with your device, like carriage return and linefeed. Then later the Calcomp and HPGL codes.

And what did we gain for that trade?

I think this link is great, because someone is clearly remembering the promise. Upvote for that.