Iirc, Apple dumped the iPhone onto the market even though it was not ready yet and was missing many elementary functions.
So not sure what you mean by "people seem to forget this every time".
For another, the competitors were also all missing at least one vital elementary function: Internet support that didn't suck.
So I don't think there are a lot of comparisons to be drawn between a yet-to-be-released VR platform that, ultimately, nobody is really asking for, and a phone that almost everybody who wasn't named Steve Ballmer, Mike Lazaridis, or Ned Ludd desperately wanted.
(Admittedly I said the same thing about the watch -- who in the world wants a watch? -- and that was way off-base given how much demand there turned out to be.)
And, from memory, only came about because Apple was Apple and could say "We don't care that you're AT&T. Create this plan for us or your customers won't be able to get an iPhone."
Blackberry for email, Windows Mobile for doorstops, and Palm for 'jack-of-all-trades, master of none'. None of them got mobile web right, none of them had iTunes, and none of them had Steve Jobs hyping them.
People seem to forget that this wasn't ever intended to be the mass market consumer version of the tech.
They've been iterating internally on a consumer version for years now, and they'll keep at it until they have something for the mass market that they think is worth shipping.