Retina 5K iMac: Powerful Proof of the PC Renaissance

I suspect you have to avoid the temptation to use smaller fonts.

Given a retina display aims to copy the sharpness we see in our every day lives from real objects, I would suggest it doesn't intrinsically carry a risk of tiring your eyes, in the same way as we don't get tired seeing all day long even though the edges of everything we look at are generally sharp. Rather in the sense of drawing on a drawing board, or reading books, ones eyes do get tired. Given that OSes are in their infancy when it comes to giving us the tools to properly manage size and resolution, it could be that some tasks are more tiring than they used to be.

I would imagine he's comparing to the typical resolution changes on Windows where everything is significantly smaller. OS X scaling does much better at replicating a normal image, and personally I find it much more comfortable of an image to stare at for extended periods.

Maybe, maybe not. Economies of scale for many of the parts will increase dramatically, not to mention all the other economic factors (i.e. change in cost of transporation, manufacturing, etc) that you're not considering.

i respectfully disagree. The professional 'workstation' in this case is just packaged in a way that forces up the cost arbitrarily.

A couple of points:

First, the 5K iMac isn't a "professional workstation" by most measures. In particular, it doesn't include ECC RAM or a "pro level" GPU. I wish ECC would become ubiquitous across all PCs, but it looks like the industry is stubbornly leaving that as one of the few real "pro" differences.

That's not to say you can't do serious work with a regular PC, just that it's not considered sufficient for high-end engineering and science tasks, where a flipped bit could mean disaster. The specs of the Mac Pro fit the bill for that, along with workstations from other manufacturers like Dell and HP. Since all but the "pro" GPU are also server components, prices shouldn't go up appreciably, and in fact will probably continue to slide as manufacturing techniques improve.

High-end PCs will remain affordable, the components used for them have many uses and will be mass-produced in large quantity for the foreseeable future. One interesting area is displays, where it's hard to see smallish (48" or less) 4K TVs not encroaching on the computer display market heavily.

I wouldn't say it's completely unbiased. They have a larger share of the education market than iPads.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2855768/why-chromebooks-are-s...

According to Amazons top 20 best selling laptops, Chromebooks do quite well. A Chromebook is in the second position and Chromebooks take up 6 spots in this list.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Laptop-Comput...

They have sold quite well. I'm not sure where, but.... all numbers point to yes.