This is the first day the 2012 iPad gets in the hands of the consumer. As with every release of a new iPad or iPhone lately, the hype in the press including TV is reaching new heights. As we all know, Steve Wozniak was somewhere in front of a store all night and by now will have taken a nap after downloading all the apps to his new iPad.

Around the world, news of the new iPad release is revealing lines outside of stores and extended waiting periods of 2-3 weeks for online buyers. As expected, one would say.

Even the brand new store in Grand Central Terminal, NYC has its share of people waiting in line (and helping the Apple stock reaching new heights). While the picture is certainly not overwhelming in terms of people waiting, images taken in other locations were indeed revealing long lines in front of Apple stores around the globe.

As a display columnist, how can I not write about the New iPad today? This device has by now put more QXGA (2548×1536) displays into the hand of users than the entire display industry for the last few years. The next level of high resolution is on its way, go and get your share.

Is this really such a big deal as everybody is making out of it? You bet! Think back to the iPhone 4 with its Retina display. Today every Smartphone is pushing the limit of pixel density in their devices. It seems obvious that people actually appreciate the higher resolution images on these devices, so we all expect the same thing to happen with the New iPad. If you are planning on releasing a tablet with a 10.1-inch 1280×800 resolution display in the second half of 2012, you better sell this for below $200 to attract any kind of interest from the press.

The question is what are people going to do with their super resolution display? There are those special apps that take full advantage of the ‘Retina Display’ like iPhoto, etc. Other than that, you can watch a full HD movie in a window on your New iPad, if you can find an app that supports this. Of course the 4G radio will come in very handy for the full HD stream of the latest basketball game, if indeed this would be available. Compressing a video stream to fit over any wireless connection still decreases the video quality to the point of what you would expect from an image source like 720p or worse.

There is also the claimed higher color saturation and faster graphics capability to talk about. Of course more pixels need faster graphic processing to be properly driven, so we will have to wait and see how much better the graphic performance really is when enough people have run their tests on the New iPad.

Here is the real hot topic for me though. With the New iPad being a success, people now WANT content with more pixels to tickle their brains with those high resolution images. In fact, Apple achieved something all other CE companies were not capable of doing. They created such a large market with a need for high resolution content, that the content creators will do this on their own without any discussion or complaints. ‘Supply and Demand’ at its best. In this case, demand for high resolution content is out there and content providers will work hard to fulfill this demand in one way or another. TV manufacturers looking at 4k TV will have to thank Apple in a few years for this.

As it seems, it would be wise to wait with buying the new iPad until the ‘Supply’ side of things has caught up. Tell me if you think I am off base here, but you have to wait for my answer until I am back from the Apple store.