And I mean it in the most positive way: if it ever works out Apple will come out with a better headset year over year, and build a community around it, XR will have made it to the mainstream. If it doesn't pan out will have a data point on what fails, and get other products that skirt around these issues while providing compelling features on the parts that matter, we have enough competition to have the concept survive.
Either way it's a win, and I salute Apple for jumping in the pool.
Even so I am not sure if we will see electronic prices dropping over time the way they have in the past. Probably the most important scaling in semiconductors was the price coming down from shrink to shrink and that seems to be over. That’s why the 40-series cards from NVIDIA don’t improve on the 30-series for performance per dollar.
Apple leads the world in powerful ARM SoC but they make high end parts that sell at high end prices and compete with Meta who is very concerned about selling price and sometimes willing to subsidize hardware in the hope they make it back on services.