What Apple has done with the iPad 1 (I'll refrain from speculating on motives, as I have absolutely no idea why they actually EOL'd it) is still not as bad as what they've done with armv6 devices. A developer, if they want (and some won't), can still support the iPad 1 fairly easily (or as easily as any support for iOS 5). The iPhone 3G and older, on the other hand, are truly unsupported; it is impossible to build for these devices in the iOS 6 SDK[1], making them a nightmare to support (and impossible to support alongside armv7s code for the new iPhone).

[1]: http://blog.chpwn.com/post/31824877081