And the touch bar, and the magic mouse, and ping, and mobile me, and hi-fi.

They're just a consumer goods company. Sometimes they make good things people don't appreciate at first. Sometimes they make bad things that people don't appreciate ever.

Their track record is better than the mean, but comparing every criticism of a first-gen Apple product to the iPod/iPhone launches is unserious. Of course some people panned any given new thing on Earth.

And this isn't even in response to someone predicting that AVP would fail, but just that the 1st-gen AVP is an immature product. The 1st-gen iPhone was an immature product! It's delusional (and discrediting to Apple!) to think the iPod, iPhone, OS X, Intel Macs, M1 Macs, etc. were as mature at launch as the later iterations we associate those technologies with now.