The Retina MacBook is effectively 1440x900 though, how is that straining to look at?

I am myopic with a spherical power of around -4 on both eyes. I used to love high-dpi displays until recently. But now I can't seem to look at them for long. I am sorry, but I can't figure out the exact reasons. I have tried changing the resolution on the retina display and even turning off the over-sampling in the lower resolutions, but nothing feels comfortable. I also loved programming with font anti-aliasing/smoothing turned off, but this alas no longer works well on the retina display.

1920x1200 is great on the rMBP. Personally I don't find it "straining".

Just to clear some of the myths surrounding the exams - I studied for only a week (and only one subject - physics) before the exams in 1997 (the year the paper leaked and the exams were re-administered). I cleared the exams with a rank of ~1500. In the two years prior to the exams I was busy making money assembling computers. Did not take any coaching either.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the exams are not as hard as they are made out to be, and the students, at least some students, are not as studiously dumb as they might seem in retrospect. I know that most of us who cleared the exams with decent ranks were just luckier that those who didn't.

Oh, by the way, I almost didn't join IIT because that year the tution fees were hiked by 10x (from $30 to $300 per semester).

I wrote on these very same points recently, but argued differently - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5804423

Sorry nobody upvoted you. I much prefer your argument! I particularly liked the phrase The execution might as well be left to an automaton. This is the part of the profession - tedious trivial logical translation from specification to program - that I refer to as 'floor sweeping', rather than programming proper (analysis/design/interesting problem solving stuff). Perhaps the percentage of our industry remaining to be liberated from that drugery is high, unfortunately the liberators must be themselves.

The icon backgrounds now look largely redundant. Apple could have done better by getting rid of the backgrounds altogether like Android.

The completely arbitrary icon sizes look absolutely terrible on Android, IMO : http://cdn.androidpolice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/nexu...

While Google's lack of consistency in icon sizing is frustrating (though it is getting better, slowly), real world usage does look much better than that, as the icons are centred rather than placed on a baseline. http://i.imgur.com/CYUVTw8.png

That being said, I do think that rounded squares are an important part of iOS's design and that style icon is associated with iOS, so I don't think it should be changed.

They don't look anything like the messy image you posted at all.

Having arbitrary sizes for icons / tiles I think is still required. I'd maybe go with a consistent gradient / no gradient approach.

Personally I'd go with no gradient and a flat colour.

The new icons look ugly, especially the gradients in the background. Psychedelic looking, should come with a warning.

I agree. In fact those icons are not the real ones. They are created on Photoshop, by a inside beta tester, who described them. I really think that we'll see something really cool after a couple of hours!

To accomodate the 1000x more sensitive sensor you will need a really fast shutter speed - maybe something like 1/1000000 of a second. Because shutters are mechanical devices, it might be difficult to achieve this without another leap in engineering. I am assuming that we cannot do much with the lenses.

Electronic shutter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_(photography)#Electroni...

Thanks! I wasn't aware of these electronic shutters.

I think that, to some extent, what we pay for are good memories. It just so happens that physical goods today produce longer lasting and stronger memories than digital goods. And the rapid increase in the production of digital stuff isn't helping their cause. Of course, at some point in the future we may actually identify strongly with and be as much possessive about our digital things as we are attached to our physical possessions.

Readability often conflicts with the geek-aesthetics on digital screens and devices. For example, I personally like to code with anti-aliasing off - I just find the code more readable that way (maybe I am used to that?). I also don't much like the retina-display because it tries to hide the digital nature of the device (can't see the pixels - makes sense?). Lastly, while serif fonts might be more readable when viewed from top there does seem to be something intangibly wrong with them when viewed head-on horizontally.

And now it is down...

Differently, did you know that readability is not always good for all types of content? If an article requires some thought and concentration then less readability is preferable - see this video of Adam Alter on something he calls 'disfluency' - http://edge.org/video/disfluency