I can see that, but with the iPad the change was drastic. Here, we're talking about a small percentage and the resolution's the same. I don't see where this affects any app. It's just like getting a larger monitor and keeping the same resolution. All things remain the same, just a tad larger...
Apology accepted. Next time you should do a bit of googling before replying like an arrogant know-it-all prick. I'm not trying piss in your cornflakes, I'm just explaining the practical problems with your desire for arbitrary (as in useless - see below) screen size increase requests.
You obviously have absolutely no development experience; I'm not going to hold that against you, but you need to understand a few things:
Xcode and Interface Builder do not accomodate scaling. It's not like on a PC or Mac where you can stretch windows. Interface Builder aligns things by measurements based on the total (fixed) screen size available. Apple would have to fundamentally retool Xcode and Interface Builder to accomodate scaling, and even if they did developers would still have to rebuild their apps because most UIs (by the way they are designed) would break if scaled to a larger width and/or height than they currently are designed to accomodate.
The reason the Retina Display upgrade worked without much of an issue was because the resolution (not screen size) was doubled. It's called pixel doubling - the number of pixels per inch increases two-fold - the actual size of the screen remains the same.
This change meant that all of the UI components for the SDK (buttons, backgrounds, etc) had to be doubled because the resolution (pixels per inch) were increased 2x. Pixels 2x = UI artwork 2x. If left at their original resolution, they would appear pixelated. You might have noticed this is you had web apps installed on your screen - or older App Store apps that hadn't yet updated their app icons.
The same goes for all of the developers' in-app art work, like custom buttons, custom backgrounds, images, and so on. All of these had to be doubled in size to accomodate the pixel doubling by the Retina Display. That's not a difficult process since most developers make their art work in Photoshop at 2x or 3x its intended size to begin with then scale it accordingly.
However, in the case of the iPad, developers were forced (obviously) to build an entirely new interface design. This wasn't a huge deal either, because developers wanted to change their apps in order to maximize the vastly increased screen real estate and different usages of the device. Think Twitter for iPhone vs. Twitter for iPad. It required another interface, but it made sense from a UI/UX standpoint.
Now, think about Apple building a new iPhone with a screen that is .5" bigger than the current one. That's barely noticeable for most consumers - it wouldn't make the text any larger, it wouldn't make the buttons bigger - it would just increase the width and height of the screen ever so slightly. It's not enough to warrant or allow for any significant UI changes, and yet every single developer would be forced to essentially build another UI variant solely to accomodate the .5" increase in screen real estate.
Not only would that be a huge waste of every developers' time, but the benefit to consumers would be so minute (if nonexistent) that many developers would be quite frustrated (and, I hope you see, unnecessarily so). Furthermore, it would fragment what has hereto been a consistent development environment (one of many reasons why developers enjoy the iOS environment). Unless Apple changes Xcode, which is possible, they're not going to be able to institute a screen size change because of how badly it would fragment the App Store.
Don't hate me, I'm just the messenger.
