What apps to get right away to show off its capabilities?

Garageband for sure.

 

Basically all of Apple's apps.

 

Comic Zeal for retina display e-comics!

 

Yes

That'll be first as well. Though to fully show off the incredible new resolution, it'll probably be some painting, photo apps as well....and of course some of the new games.

 

Start with Facebook app to show off your first iPad

 

The best app to start is appadvice. It gives you the best of for every category and tells you when apps go on sale or become free for a limited time.

Other than that my favorite apps are
pulse
pandora
splash top remote desktop
cnn
use today
cnbc real time
engadget
Facebook
remote (apple's app)

 

he is talking about retina ready apps. these apps listed here will not all be retina ready on the 16th.

 

The Facebook app was horrible for my iPad 2. Slow loading and kept crashing. I had so much hope for it but ended up going back to MyPad.

The ultimate show-off app will be Speedtest just to show the LTE speed. After that would be the next Infinity Blade.

 

iPhoto is very slick and an awesome app to edit your pics.

 

The new Infinity Blade would look good, Rage HD, Apples new app iPhoto, other than that theres not that many apps that will take advantage of the new retina display. Give it a couple weeks though, there will be tonnes.

 

I don't have it yet (haven't upgraded to 5.1 due to jailbreak), but I think iPhoto will be a real winner with the retina display.

I also always recommend FlipBoard to new iPad owners - not so much to show off the display, but to show off how the iPad (with any display) changes how you use the web. I remember when I first loaded a twitter feed into it and saw it turn into basically a magazine it clicked for me exactly what was so special about this little machine.

 

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Or, load up your own photos and show off the photo app and iPhoto.