Most people just want to use the web and email (most of the time THROUGH the web) on a computer. So give 'em what they want.
And if you say "what about Flash!" I'm gonna guess one of two things: you want video (cough cough PORN) or you want to play Farmville.
So this time, Apple's going to have a serious competitor early on. Interesting times for us consumers.
I bet you see iPad evolve into Apple's cloud computing platform while the OSX-based notebooks stay they way they are.
This also has some serious long term problems for Mac OS. What if Apple decides (or has already decided) that the future is closed-architecture cloud computing devices? You'd see OS X (OS XI?) dead before the decade is over.
It raises an interesting question though. Is Apple slightly killing off their supply of future developers? If people don't grow up with programmable machines will the IPad generation be so into programming or as knowledgeable about computers actually work in general. I know a fair chunk of my knowledge has come from diagnosing and fixing faults in computers.