I think your definition of 'looked fine' is a lot different than Steve Jobs' and people who need bifocals. My guess is that your task bar in XP must have been

I think your definition of 'looked fine' is a lot different than Steve Jobs' and people who need bifocals. My guess is that your task bar in XP must have been less than a centimeter tall, the system font less than a millimeter tall. I know there are a lot of people like you who value having more on the screen like that, but realistically, that's not a very large market niche. The goal at Apple was to keep roughly the same dimensions for interface elements while increasing the sharpness of text and icons. If the user wanted to, they could reduce the font size in whatever application they were using to make practical use of the increased pixel density.