Think about it in terms of concert/sporting event ticket sales. Everyone hates scalpers. They aren't real fans, they're not going to go see the act/game. They know when all the ticket sales are going to be, since their entire life revolves around getting tickets, and they know all the pre-sales and other ways of snapping up tickets. They buy tickets in huge blocks when possible, use intermediaries and partners to buy more tickets to get around any limits.
When you, the fan, get around to buying tickets for the event you find that they're all sold out already (except for the nosebleeds). But you can get tickets on Craigslist for 3x the face value of the ticket from some guy who bought several large blocks for the sole purpose of re-selling them with a huge markup.
Maybe the venue shouldn't care if re-sellers are buying up all the tickets, but it sure makes for a shitty experience for their actual market (i.e. the people showing up for the event). It also limits the venue's ability to control supply and demand because they no longer have any direct say over the market price for their good/service.
So both fans and the venues seem to be worse off, while the middle man makes a big profit by artificially restricting supply.
The guy in the article exhibits the same type of buying behavior that a scalper would: buying more iPads than a normal individual would require and then reselling them at a markup. Apple doesn't have any way to tell that he's trying to extend their market abroad to people that can't purchase an iPad locally. But I'm pretty sure they have the same view toward a middleman that concert venues would. And the local customers trying to get an iPad when supplies are scarce are also going to be frustrated that one individual is making (effectively) block purchases.
One of the cardinal rules of good business is to cut out the middleman. That seems to be what's going on here.