Personally I don't give Apple a free pass for not being able to update the original iPad to iOS6. They low-balled the RAM presumably to keep costs under control and now users are going to suffer for it. Delivering one major OS update is better than most of their competition but still not good enough.
Actually, they delivered two - it shipped with iOS 3.2 and has been supported with iOS 4 and 5. But I agree it's annoying that it's not supported with iOS 6, especially given that the 3GS has a slower processor and the same RAM and will be getting it.