I agree that the appearance of the system in this regard probably turns off lots of users. There are some in the Pharo community who are quite aware of this fact, but there are simply not enough contributors at the moment to deal with it on their own.
I am more hopeful about Bloc, however. The stack is not any more insane than that of a web browser.
The entire subsystems were rewritten from scratch, there are huge lengths of deprecated and/or poorly documented code, however, this hidpi bug remains unfixed for 5 years or more.
This is not about having too few contributors; this is about different priorities. This is why Pharo remains an obscure project on the margins of the industry, despite all its potential.
I am more hopeful about Bloc, however. The stack is not any more insane than that of a web browser.