Wasn't the DAO supposed to be the first real app, and it failed so badly they had to hard-fork to fix it?

Isn't it functioning fine now though?

What happens when the next one is hacked to the same degree? I doubt a second fork will be tolerated.

The forkers have established - perhaps quite reasonably - the principle that Ethereum isn't a set of rules unto itself, but it includes the ability to right what are externally perceived as wrongs even when they are done by playing according to the internal rules. So the forkers have set a precedent for more forks, as needed, whenever the community as a whole decides some sufficiently impactful party is cheating the spirit, rather than the letter of the law.

Except that the whole value prop of Ethereum was supposed to be that the letter of the law was all, and the system would unconditionally and inviolably enforce it.

Yes, exactly. That got, semi-explicitly, changed in the fork. While remaining so in the nonfork.

Touche. Second real dApp?

These aren't quite dApps in themselves, but the infrastructure is building to better allow nurturing of dApps.

It also seems like the public chain will be leveraged in other novel ways.

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Eg.

https://blockoneid.thomsonreuters.com/

https://blockone.thomsonreuters.com/

https://basicattentiontoken.org/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fintech-payments-circle-i... (The IMF recently commented on how virtual currencies would make international transfers more secure, and cheaper which is something Circle is already doing on the backend)