So I had previously wondered about this "minority of the population" claim and I looked up the stats. Apparently 35% of the population has better than 20/20 vis

So I had previously wondered about this "minority of the population" claim and I looked up the stats. Apparently 35% of the population has better than 20/20 vision without any corrective measures. With glasses/contacts/etc that numbers jumps to 75%. I think it's safe to say "heroes" is a bit of an exaggeration. I don't know why the expert you're quoting is specifying an 18 inch viewing distance when the article you appear to have quoted from was speaking of the iPhone 4; Apple claims a 12 inch viewing distance here as far as I'm aware. Then he makes some vague statement about it being possible to do better and this is simply the closest we've gotten to a retina resolution so far. Sometimes academics just want a bit of press time because it makes them look good. Anyway, it's great we're getting increasing DPI on our devices, I'm just a bit afraid we'll get stuck and not progress to true retina displays because the consumers will be convinced they already have it anyway.