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Comment by scott_meade | Hacker News Reader

"even though the screen sucks" reminds me of Lewis C.K.'s "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy". How soon we feel anything less than retina sucks. Really? We're spoiled people when we look at a piece of technology like the iPad mini and our response is "this screen sucks!". Sheesh.

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Look at it this way: if Apple released an MBA without a big glass touchpad, wouldn't everyone say "the touchpad sucks?" It's not that the old touchpads weren't usable, it's just that it's really hard to go back after you've used a new-style touchpad.

You presented the wrong problem. In your situation Apple gave them something they didn't ask for and was an incremental upgrade to a 20 year-old way of the solution.

Society's problems, from Louis C.K.'s POV, is that everyone expects everything to be faster and they always expect to be amazed. As we all know, that occurs very rarely in technology.

The point is that people don't like something getting worse, even if other parts of a thing are better. Regression stands out.

People jump to the "everything is amazing and nobody is happy" thing way too quickly. It is a funny bit for sure. But if we take it as a life philosophy, a: we would never function cause we just being standing around gawking in amazement at almost everything b: things would never improve. Apple makes high quality displays for all of its iOS products besides the Mini. So, yeah, the Mini's screen sucks. Especially when competitor's products are already more "amazing" in screen resolution for less price.

I think it's less about gawking in amazement and more about perspective. Getting wound up about small technical drawbacks is very "first-world problem".

My point was what exactly sucks about it? That it's not as pretty? Even the article says "It’s not like visible pixels in any way diminish the functional experience... Text is still readable at that size, and the touchscreen isn’t any more difficult to use." So basically we're saying that if something's not as pretty as its predecessors that it sucks. That's what seems slightly wrong to me, in my humble opinion.

I'd say it's like turning off ClearType in Windows (this is forced on me when I webex)... it's jarring, and a bit painful. When the ClearType comes back on (after webex is ended), it just feels less annoying.

Another analogy is sometimes when eating at our dining room, whoever had cooked will forget to turn off the kitchen fan. It's not really that noticable. However, when one of us eventually remembers during dinner and goes and turns it off , all the sudden it feels much nicer.

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