You remind me of a story I read a few months ago about upcoming displays from companies who do make them. Displays that will be in future cell phones, like the iPhone, etc. And in the comment section some Apple fanboy says, that he loves trains, and started talking about how these companies are copying/reacting to Apple. He was just so ignorant and smug, not even realizing that those screens were going to be part of the iPhone.
There were iPad devices introduced before the iPad, but you wouldn't know that if you don't follow technology news. You will only see the intense hype, all day on every channel that Apple had when they introduced the iPad. That's a luxury that other companies don't get. One of the funniest things was reading a comment of someone saying that the HP slate was a copy of the ipad. This tablet form factor was something that had been talk about for years in the PC industry before the ipad was release. I saw Gates talking about it in 2005, and in 1998 in his book. In 1998 talking about an iPad like device, not a tablet PC, but iPad like device. The technology wasn't there back then.
Now for the display. Apple doesn't make displays. If there's a rumor that Apple might get a high resolution display for the Mac, then that's because the companies who do make the displays, like Panasonic are developing them. GPUs are now more than powerful enough to handle them, it's been known that 4k resolution videos will soon come, even youtube has them. When did this rumor that Apple were going to come out with a high res sceen start? Wasn't it like a few months ago? Do you think Panasonic heard of the rumor and suddenly were able with a snap of a finger develop this screen? I've been hearing for a couple months Samsung developing a really high resolution screen, but you wouldn't know about it if you only follow Apple news. You have to use your common sense.