Exaggeration is in full swing around here, I argued with several who insisted that "horrid" was accurate and not an exaggeration. "Horrid."
I'm almost 100% certain that if there were no reporting of screen resolutions and people were ignorant of the concept (which much of the public actually probably is), that none of the people running around saying "it's the worst screen ever, it burned my retinas to look at it and now I'm blind for life" (how was that?<giggle>) would ever be so negative. Just like a bunch of grease monkeys standing around staring at a neighbour's car engine decrying it because it's "only got a 2 barrel carb" (and of course completely ignoring any other details of the car, like the carb is the *only* feature that actually matters).
It's a good thing the girlfriends and wives of these negative nellies don't run around comparing their features in the same way!
Non retina screens killed my father and raped my mother...
Apple with its marketing gave everyone the expectation that premium devices will have retina displays. Period. Have you seen commercials or advertisements about every other Apple product? What do they predominantly feature?
I think it will be interesting to see what the version 2 mini brings to the table. Will it bring a retina display using components already available? Or will it be non retina in order to differentiate the mini from it's big brother and keep it from eating into it's sales?
If Tim or Jony goes on record and states "While we all love retina displays, we couldn't manufacture a mini using components available today in a form factor that we find acceptable.", I'll accept it and move on.