One big thing Apple has going for it is that they will iterate on a product year after year instead of doing one hardware update and giving up like Microsoft did.
Regardless, developers need hardware in their hands if you want third party apps for the new platform.
Think about its 'most compelling' consumer use case - Lifelike Avatars in FaceTime. Which one do you think is preferred, cooking in the kitchen and wearing a headset, or propping your iPhone up and FaceTiming while cooking? Where on earth does it 'change the experience' to have a real-life like avatar? We have the 'life like' avatar right now with Zooms - and the reason Zooms suck is innately the human part, not the rendering part - most meetings could be emails or 5 min phone calls.
Everyone had spreadsheets and publishing needs (Mac), portable music players (iPods), cellular phones (iPhone), headphones (AirPods), home wireless music speakers (HomePods)... think of fitbit / pebble, 1980s VR and then todays VR ?
That's amusing, since wearing the headset while doing physical tasks on factory floors was the exact use case Microsoft pushed for Hololens 2.
> Microsoft’s HoloLens 2: a $3,500 mixed reality headset for the factory
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/24/18235460/microsoft-holole...
(we this found out with GM doing a pilot)
[Edit] to keep it going, external cameras are how you verify parts are picked correctly and put in the right place - you don't need FPV for that to be verified either.
[Edit 2] Until a flight simulator uses VR and AR headsets as primary training, this stuff just doesn’t make sense. CAE has definitely explored with this but it’s not what they reach for
And how'd that work out, commercially?
It's the Lisa vs the Apple II all over again. If only they had the courage left to send this project the way of the headphone jack.