Your feeling represents one extreme, which is that hindsight proved Apple was right and critics were wrong, and that history will repeat.
The other extreme is expecting history to repeat by demonstrating that people have consistently over estimated the probability of success in the VR space.
I don't know which is right, but my gut says that VR is not something that will go mainstream in its current form (HMD). It's too 'bluetooth earpiece', and doesn't match the prestige image that is particularly strong in people that favor Apple products. Notice that I am not criticizing anything technical with AVR, which I think is a peripheral issue.
There is a large spectrum of possibility between those two extremes.
While I agree that blindly expecting history to repeat is problematic, it’s worth considering that this seems to be Apple’s strong suit, and while there are plenty of questions about how the market will react to this product, the early demos seem to confirm that Apple has indeed accomplished something that the other headsets have not. I think this is why some people are so bullish about this tech - and not for no reason.
> It's too 'bluetooth earpiece', and doesn't match the prestige image that is particularly strong in people that favor Apple products
Apple took something that was decidedly uncool (Bluetooth earpieces) and turned it into a status symbol (AirPods) despite these earpieces looking pretty goofy when they first landed.
And again, I think the optimism comes from their demonstrated ability to achieve this kind of shift in perception/public consciousness.
The reality distortion field in the form of top tier marketing from Apple has the best hope of making progress in this area compared to those that have come before.
Could this all still be an enormous flop? Maybe. It could also be a Newton, and a decade later we’ll get the product Apple really wanted to ship: the iPhone (compact glasses).
How many legit hardware companies have tried a headset lately? Sony, and theirs is apparently really ergonomic, just tied to gaming. Other than that, not many.
The trend I see is software companies like Facebook, Valve, and Microsoft over-estimating their odds of success at making hardware devices.
If the experience is profoundly "life-changing" (obviously an exaggeration), all of the other objections will fade away. I think they've created a device capable of at least one, if not multiple, "killer apps" that are not possible using todays hardware.
The other extreme is expecting history to repeat by demonstrating that people have consistently over estimated the probability of success in the VR space.
I don't know which is right, but my gut says that VR is not something that will go mainstream in its current form (HMD). It's too 'bluetooth earpiece', and doesn't match the prestige image that is particularly strong in people that favor Apple products. Notice that I am not criticizing anything technical with AVR, which I think is a peripheral issue.