January 21, 2011
When the iPhone 4 was first announced, Apple loaded it with a lot of new features, some of which were really amazing like the Retina Display. Well later that year Apple released the new iPod Touch 4G that also featured the new Retina Display. With that said, it would only make sense that the iPad would get the Retina Display, doubling it’s number of pixels to 2048×1536 (260 DPI). That’s a lot of pixels. To put it in simpler terms, it’s basically doubling the iPad’s 9″ screen, but being able to keep it the same size yet have the number of pixels a 18″ screen would have pretty much I guess you could say.
First off, hidden within Apple’s iBook app is a picture of the bookmark image for iPadx2. When the term “x2” us used, it basically means a doubled screen resolution from the previous generation of that device like the iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4 for example. This is very supportive evidence for the next generation iPad to get a Retina Display, however, there’s another piece of evidence as well.

The next piece of evidence to blame is simply a picture of wood that is also found in Apple’s iBook app. Yes, a picture of wood. Found in iBook’s sources files is a file titled “Wood Tile@2x.png” and is 1536×800 pixels, exactly double the amount of pixels “Wood Tile.png” has.

(Click on image for full size)
While this is very supportive evidence for a Retina Display equipped iPad, a lot ca still happen between now and the time it is announced, so we’ll have to see what happens.
[Mac Rumors]