I don't think you are getting the effect of doubling the resolution will have on pictures so try this to help.
1. On a piece of paper draw a square.
2. Now draw a line vertically down the center and another horizontally across the center.
You should now have a picture of a square split into 4 equal smaller squares.
Now lets pretend that these four squares are four pixels in the current iPad
3. Now split the 4 squares again like in step 2.
You should now have grid of four squares by four squares.
This is like a iPad with a retina display. As you can see any image that is displayed on the current iPad can be displayed on the retinal display and look identical as 1 pixel on the old can be seen a 4 pixels on the new.
Pixels are pixels, every image is defined by its number of pixels. If what you said is the case, there would be no need to design iphone 4 apps at a higher resolution. What you are saying is that a retina display can somehow turn a 200px jpg into a 400px jpg and still look as good. For that 200px image to look as good and even crisper (due to physically smaller pixels) it would need to be saved at 400px from the get go.