Not really. DPI is dots per inch. As screens were much smaller then, their DPI (or rather PPI) wasn’t much less. For example, Macintosh was 72 ppi for a long t

Not really. DPI is dots per inch. As screens were much smaller then, their DPI (or rather PPI) wasn’t much less. For example, Macintosh was 72 ppi for a long time ( it is 109 ppi now). My first LCD screen was 15“. And that was for a desktop, not a laptop. 17“ or 19“ were for rich guys or graphics designers ;) What is certainly the case though is that GUIs nowadays are much more wasteful with space.