Most non-technical people I know genuinely like Apple, it is a great experience for them. They don't know, and don't care, what "side-loading" etc means.
However, I absolutely don’t think Steve Jobs would have let the Vision Pro in its current state sit on store shelves.
I just can’t imagine him greenlighting a product so close to the prototyping stage, especially in an environment where Apple had zero urgency compared to the past.
And yet he launched the iPhone, which, in its first generation, didn't even let you install apps on it. The point is not to excel in all areas. The point is to excel in relevant areas where the competition can not easily catch up with you.
The Vision Pro doesn’t have a lot of features where it excels. Running apps on it is inferior to using your phone or tablet. Watching movies is inferior to your home television. Productivity is inferior to a standard computer. Games are inferior to existing VR gaming systems like Index or Quest. Reviewers universally describe it as lonely, dystopian. Eyestrain is still a problem, dizziness is still a problem.
The iPhone had things about it that were better than existing solutions in a product category (cell phones and smartphones) that was proven and growing.
The most optimistic thing you can say about the Vision Pro is that if it were more like a pair of sunglasses and got rid of all the downsides to using it, it might be a really good true AR experience where your brain forgets about the fact that you’ve augmented reality. The problem is, there is no physical hardware technology that is on the horizon that will ever feasibly bring it to that place.
Not being able to install apps was completely resolvable by a software update. The hardware problems of the original iPhone like the lack of 3G were resolved within a calendar year with the next model, and the original model had an acceptable level of battery life.
If a similar situation to the iPhone was happening we should be seeing a Ming Chi Kuo type of rumor about a Vision Pro coming in 2025 that scuttles the external battery, enables the system to get through an entire Hollywood movie without charging, and solves the problem of the headset messing up your hair and making you interact with the world through ski goggles. These improvements are impossible within the next 10 years or so.
There was also way more urgency with smartphones. If Apple had waited one or two years the iPhone would have been snuffed out by competition. We would see a market dominated by other players in the market like Nokia, Microsoft, BlackBerry, or Palm.
In contrast, the VR/AR market is literally a contracting one with the only major players being Valve and Meta. The iPhone entered a market that was clearly in an upward trajectory.
Would anyone be surprised if Meta announced the shuttering of the Quest division within the next 5 years or so? It has never made money. It has never come close to breaking even, it’s a complete moonshot money sink for Meta. The Quest 3 is selling slower than the Quest 2 did. Microsoft quit on the market before Apple even entered it. Valve hasn't made a follow-up headset and might not ever do so.
A reminder of this story from a few years back: https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/apples-ar-vr-headset-repor...
This is a product that was in development hell that had pressure to ship. A more courageous executive would have seen the struggles at Meta and killed the project years ago.
The Apple Car idea was legitimately way better and would have taken less time.
Compare that to the level of change between Ballmer-Nadella or Schmidt-Pichai. Apple has displayed remarkable constancy.