Jobs wanted, and presumably thought a lot about, "headphones for video".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO0OGmNDKVg
> "You know, the fundamental problem here is that headphones are a miraculous thing. You put on a pair of headphones, and you get the same experience you get with a great pair of speakers, right?
> "There's no such thing as headphones for video, right?There's not something I can carry with me that I can put on, and it gives me the same experience I get when I'm watching my 50-inch plasma display at home."
They may find enough of a market to prove out and further-develop the tech. I'm pessimistic about AR in general until/unless the hardware develops a lot further, but it's possible they'll carve out enough of a market with this to use it as a testbed and proving ground for later, lower-priced (and/or far more capable) versions.
Decent PCs used to cost this much or more, inflation adjusted.
Maybe the flopped iPod HiFi was a reaction to Jobs' feelings about the iPod isolating people. Who knows?
I think he mostly cared about selling a lot of products.
There were also some pretty easy jailbreaks after not too long, which allowed for 3rd party apps before Apple had an official store.
I think the only things holding back the original iPhone were the price and production volume. As I remember, it sold out quickly. And everywhere I went people were every interested in it. The guys selling cell phones at the mall were trying to stop me to see it, a girl at the bar said having that was better than a puppy. Pulling it out to use it was like being a celebrity, everyone started paying attention and trying to get close to it; it was a very strange time. I don’t recall anyone saying they didn’t want it due to a lack of features, other than people online looking for clicks or who had a history of Apple criticism.
But I'm talking more like culturally / philosophically, I don't think Steve Jobs would have marketed it this way or wanted it framed this way. To that point I'm not sure he'd have green lighted the product at all. It can be very dystopian. The silly eyes thing seems like someone along the way realized that and is trying to mitigate it poorly.
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology then try to figure out where to sell it.”
Given that, I don't think having a large screen strapped to the front of your face is a great customer experience.
So he absolutely knew that the project was being worked on.
And not sure why you think Apple isn't going to allow multiple AVP headsets to watch movies together.
They already have the technology with SharePlay etc to do it.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2023/08/23/working-on-vision-pro-since-2...
Apparently the main use case Om sees this is replacing the family TV in the living room?
To me it seems to be pushing people to retreat further into isolation.