Fundamentally, I'm just sick of that quote about the iPod. It gets trotted out all the time, and I don't see any sign that it encodes any profound wisdom. Is it easy to misjudge the potential of early technologies? How do we know? Because one guy misjudged the popularity of the iPod once? Was the iPod an early technology? Was its popularity due to at-that-time unrealized potential?

But perhaps more relevantly to the VR thing, I don't think that the original article had anything to do with "potential." Everyone understands the potential of VR, but there are people saying that it is really awesome RIGHT NOW. And the author was saying that it is not really awesome RIGHT NOW.