People are just assuming it’s meant to take off and be a successful killer product right out the gate when I think Apple is playing the long game here. Many higher ups in the company (and others like Meta) believe Augmented Reality is the next revolutionary interface, and an early adopter product for developers to get their hands on and work on software for a new type of technology is one strategy for going about this.
Many are treating it like it’s Apple’s version of the Oculus, a VR headset that is completely separate from the farther off Apple glasses that many are willing to believe will have a good set of use cases and have a future without much question. Here’s my speculation;
It’s the same product line
This is Apple’s first venture into the wearable AR space. People get tripped up over this having displays with outer passthrough cameras feeding video to the screens instead of optical AR (a transparent glass with a display built in, like Microsoft’s Hololens) which is often what people envision when they think AR. However, passthrough AR is a legitimate venture that has its upsides, like effective field of view, doesn’t have light occlusion issues that would effect optical AR, and more versatility in entertainment given you can switch between full VR and passthrough.
So I think fundamentally, people have yet to understand Apple’s approach here but many of the misconceptions will hopefully be dispelled at announcement.