I am not sure that is right about the anti-aliasing. I think it is a separate component from the SR. I have been following this from nearly the beginning and the anti-aliasing was something that was figured out along the way after SR was implemented.
Regardless of what is making the picture look great (and I personally think a lot of it is due to SR (or deblurring) in combination with a great anti-aliasing method and a bit of sharpening), the end result was worth the journey.