VR in 2017 will be 90+% about gaming, and Apple has never really cared about gaming. I doubt they'll start caring now all of a sudden.
And my thoughts are that Apple cannot bring the same Stevie vision of simplicity and use to VR, which is why they will never care about it.
They'll have to stick better graphics cards in their computers, but that's doable.
Probably their biggest challenge would be coming up with a headset that is "Apple-y", given that the design issues involved in creating them right now still create something fundamentally klunky. (VR is starting to take off not because anyone's figured out how to make it not klunky, but because it transitioned from intolerably klunky to tolerably klunky. Along with the latency improvements.)
I'm not saying they're going to do it. But they could.