Repeat after me, "Apple is a hardware company". Yesterday's financials, and the admitted non-profitability of itunes and the app store, just go to bear this out. Let's follow the money.
Apple wants to shift vast quantities of iPads and make a nice profit on them. And since they are not priced too high, and the costs are not too great, they probably can. The integrated A4 processor is bound to be a lot cheaper than paying Intel for PC class chips and GPUs.
Now, the last barrier to selling these things in the required quantities is to make people want them. Apple is too wise to flog some undifferentiated shiny stuff, because even though the fanbois will queue up to lick its matt aluminium surface, the public at large have a healthier scepticism. And this is why until now Apple has shunned the tablet sector. And the reason it has now finally decided to bless the sector with the fruits of its wisdom and brilliance.
The app store for iPhone has shown that the web is not the be-all and end-all of the user experience. The demand for apps has exploded because carefully written and well crafted apps provide a far superior and much more productive user experience than the browser, at least on a smartphone size screen. Apple is betting that it can do the same again on the iPad. This is not a certainty of course, but if things work the way they're planned, new UI elements in the SDK will allow developers to build immersive applications for everything you could possibly want to do on a tablet. The multitouch interface will integrate yet more deeply with the UI and the whole thing will just be an easier and more seamless extension of hand and eye than you ever thought you would see this side of the movies.
As an app developer I'm very excited by the possibilities this opens up. It's not that there's money to be made by selling apps directly on the app store, because there isn't. It's the feedback loop between the possibilities offered by the device and its UI, and the organisations who want a presence there, that will drive the dominance of the commissioned app market, and ensure that the iPad is unique. And Apple will continue to make lots of money selling hardware.
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