It has NFC for payments, and Apple has partners for that. In that instance, and in many others, it's leveraging partnerships and infrastructure established for the iPhone. Just as the iPad leveraged iPhone, which in turn leveraged iPod's iTunes. e.g. maps, siri, appstore, music/video suppliers.

Probably existing developers (knowing objective-C, libraries, OS; swift too) will end up being the most important resource...

But I think you're right that it's simply not a general-purpose device, like apple2e, mac, iphone or ipad. It's too limited. It's more like an ipod, appleTV, game console or kindle.

BTW: I hate the way apple fanboys downvote any comment that can in any way be interpreted as remotely critical of Apple or Apple products. It's more interesting to have a discussion. As it is, your first comment is so down-grayed, I can't actually read it.