Microsoft and Apple had an arms race going where if one invested heavily in a technology, the other would follow to achieve some kind of parity. Video, productivity software, etc. I remember Apple leading a lot of these, and Microsoft occasionally embarrassing itself, like Quicktime/Video for Windows scandal, or when Apple released At Ease and Microsoft followed with Bob.
The long-term vision for Apple with OpenDoc probably involved commoditizing productivity software somehow to undermine Microsoft's market position. But it was technology with no proven consumer demand. And immature. Every demo I tried felt clunky, halfassed and confusing. But it was probably an attempt at recreating something from PARC (didn't Lisa have an Alto inspired document-centric model? I'm out of my depth when it comes to Xerox)
(a) Deprecation of a framework is inaccurate. It was halting development on OpenDoc -- which had been sold as the future of software development on Macs and other OS's up to that point (sort of, you had to be there). There is no modern parallel; Apple halting all development on UIKit and removing support and tools for it tomorrow would be something like it.
(b) Steve said in the video that the guy in the audience might be right. But he also said that Apple had to focus to survive.
Apple just barely made it -- remember that while the iMac was a design masterpiece, it wasn't that big compared to the rest of the industry; Apple was still essentially fighting for its life with every hardware release until the iPod.