Retina/HiDPI are almost entirely better than the alternative without them. The "almost" is just because of increased processing and power needs, which pretty quickly became insignificant. They took over because there's no real compromise. You pick the one that's better in all circumstances.
A display that's better outdoors and worse indoors is never going to take off. Approximately nobody wants to carry two phones just so that they can see the screen a little better while they're waiting for the bus. Current screens are good enough for outdoor use, even if not great.
> A display that's better outdoors and worse indoors is never going to take off.
That's not what I'm suggesting. We already have those displays. What I'm saying is that once they have the technology to make a great outdoors display without too many compromises on the other parts, then they have an entirely new category of device to replace the old, and to sell hundreds of millions of units.
> Approximately nobody wants to carry two phones just so that they can see the screen a little better while they're waiting for the bus.
You're arguing like you live a limited life, which I'm sure is not the case, you're just arguing in that way in the quote above. People want to be outdoors much more than just to wait for the bus. And approximately 100% of the people who work with computers would prefer to do it in a well-lit environment. Offices and living rooms are currently constructed to shield from light, to let people see their computer or TV screens better.
Not to forget the people who actually work outdoors and need to check blueprints, take orders, or whatever. Bring your laptop to the park on a sunny day and try to use it. It won't be pleasant for your eyes even in the shadow.
> see the screen a little better
It's not a little, it's a lot. Try comparing your phone screen out in the sun with a sheet of paper with something written or printed. The paper is much brighter.
> Current screens are good enough for outdoor use, even if not great.
They are absolutely awful, and you need to compare in real life with better screens or paper to get a feel for it.
This is why I originally wrote that Apple is the right company to bring this kind of technology to the masses. They understand that the general public will buy products that are great to use, not products which are capable of being used if the user suffers all the time.
I guess I misunderstood "needing clothes for cold weather and for warm weather. Right now we only have indoor clothes..." as suggesting we could have different screens for indoor and outdoor.
I often work outside in the middle latitudes when it's nice out, which usually means sunny. My laptop's display is fine in the shade. If I was desperate, I could use one of those third-party apps that enables HDR mode for all content to get it brighter than 100%, but so far I haven't needed it.
Which screens are you using outdoors? There's a pretty wide range of maximum brightness out there, so your experience will vary considerably depending on your specific hardware. A Dell Pro 16 laptop (picked arbitrarily from dell.com, I know nothing about it otherwise) display does 300 nits. My laptop does 1,000 nits, 1,600 with an HDR hack. An iPhone from the past few years will do 2,000. This is a wide range of usability.
If it's sunny outdoors, I use an E-ink display. My Macbook Air does a maximum of 500 nits, but I don't think even 1600 nits is enough, which is the maximum a Macbook Pro can do with some hacking.
It's usable if you really need to, but it's far from good. What's needed is "great" if Apple wants to bring a new category of device to mass market (new as in how iPhone with retina display was new).
> An iPhone from the past few years will do 2,000. This is a wide range of usability.
Billions of people use their phones outside every day, so there's no doubt it's usable. But it's a very very bad experience when the weather is sunny. Just look around you at the people squinting and shading their display with their free hand.
I have a friend who also insisted that modern OLED phones are good for outdoor use, and we tried putting his phone with max brightness next to a Kindle and a white sheet of paper. The difference is night and day. LCD/OLED displays are pathetic next to reflective displays outdoors. And much harder to read.
People say their Acer touchpad is good until they try a Macbook touchpad. They said that lo-DPI displays were good until they saw a Retina/hi-DPI display. They said 1,5 hours of battery was good until Apple started selling 8 hour battery life laptops. Or that entering a passcode was good until Apple introduced Touch ID. Etc etc.
Screen visibility outdoors is a real pain-point with modern electronics, and I think many people would like to pay for a good solution to this problem if it was offered, rather than suffer a bad experience for little reason.
I said “good enough,” which is not quite the same as “good.” They’re usable.
Better outdoor usability is demonstrably a selling point. That’s why newer iPhones have such a high max brightness. And people will certainly like even more. But they’re not going to pay a large amount for it, or accept any loss of indoor capability. It’s not going to be a new category of device, just the same stuff except better in very bright light.
It would be a new category of device in the sense that a significant amount of current device owners will have a very good reason to upgrade and in the case of portable computers and tablets it would change completely how and where they are used. I think that's the main concern of the original question: What next great thing could Apple release to make an additional ton of money again?
A display that's better outdoors and worse indoors is never going to take off. Approximately nobody wants to carry two phones just so that they can see the screen a little better while they're waiting for the bus. Current screens are good enough for outdoor use, even if not great.