By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

It was the software -- FaceTime, Garage Band, iMovie and Photo Booth -- and the colorful Smart Covers. I kid you not. There are good reasons why so much of yesterday's launch event focused on software -- hell, Apple even made a video about the new covers; now what does that you tell you?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs officiated yesterday's launch event, which spent surprisingly little time on iPad 2 -- and that may have confounded some people, given the huge amount of hype about the tablet. But as I explained yesterday, Apple typically iterates rather than innovates hardware on a new category's successor product. I have laid out five reasons why the other stuff -- new software features and applications and even the colorful cases -- are more important.

1. The platform is a continuum. There has been much debate about whether or not iPad is a PC. On February 21st, I took the position that iPad is not a PC.