Optimising code costs money, may make the code base harder to maintain and does not help much with selling new devices. I really hope there will be a future shift in making money from software, not hardware. Right now the opposite seems to be happening. :(
From my perspective Apple makes almost all their iPhone money from the software. The phones are lovely hardware, but look at the original iPhone and 3GS. They were plastic soap bars. It didn't matter because the software was phenominal. I think their problems with iOS are crucial. If they let the quality of their software slip for too long they'll be in serious trouble. I still think they've got maybe 2 years lead over the competition in their overall OS, services and applications portfolio, but that's less of a lead than they had 2 years ago.
