I purchased my first desktop computer when I was in school. It had a dual-core processor with 2 GB RAM and a 15-inch monitor with 720p LCD display. Back in 2010, when CRT monitors weren’t extinct yet, having an LCD display at home meant you had something that’s truly next-gen.

As pretty as that monitor looked on my desk, everything else on the web didn’t look as nice. The internet connection was painfully slow, web pages were full of bmp icons and low-resolution images. The web simply didn’t look good.

A few years later, I was using Windows laptops that still had 720p displays. It didn’t make the web look any better, but the web did start to look better. Average internet connections became faster, so the web developers increased the quality of the icons and pictures they put on their websites.

However, the windows laptops were still stuck in all 720p displays. And because of that, the beautification of the web largely went unnoticed.

And then, Apple dropped the bomb with its MacBook Pros with Retina Display. The web suddenly took a downfall in terms of how good it looked. Of course, I couldn’t afford a Mac at that time, so I only read about how the web suddenly became ugly. But it didn’t take long for websites to start using ‘retina-ready’ icons and images.

Fast forward to the present day, the web now looks glamorously beautiful. Icons have taken a flatter yet modern look. Images are high resolution. Text is crisp. But you will miss out on all of that unless you have access to the web with a high-resolution display.