Saw the 9" model available today on display this morning at B&N. They did not get the 7" yet.
Only messed around with it for a few minutes, the clerk was hawking me for a sale so my time was limited. BUT there was a developer's subfolder under device if I remember correctly in the settings menu and a choice for mock applications to be enabled. Not sure what that is all about. Maybe access to third party apps isn't totally out of the question without hacking but I probably need to pinch myself.