Its fascinating. These 'pundits', lets remember (beside the question of whether it was even accurate or significant-- enough pundits and someone will have said anything), we didn't know what the iPad was going to be. The possibility that it would be a powerful, fully-fledged OSX running computer was considered very real (remember the slamming people gave it as just a big iPhone).. if the question had been 'what do you think we will charge for our iPod touch with a bigger screen', not even the most hardcore apple pundit would have said '<$1k'.

Then he lingers on this issue-- talking about how much they have accomplished for the price-- almost making a value proposition for it at $999. After about a minute of $999 up on the screen he announces that '[apple] have met our cost goals'. I think this phrasing is very interesting-- he doesn't say 'we have beaten our goals', 'met our aggressive goals' or 'achieved a low cost'-- nothing to remove from the perception that it could be $999. At the point at which your expectation is highest that he is going to announce that the goal they met was a $999 ipad, and he has built tension, they dramatically drop in the real price.

Even the fact that they managed to manipulate their audience is in turn a suggestive indicator that this is great value, a shock, at this price. This can have a big effect when you consider that the press are not immune from this manipulation-- who then present this device as highly desirable and of great value.

It's Apple, they don't need to do that. People love them, especially the people going to those announcement events.