Apple has no problems clearly announcing dev kits as dev kits, just look at the Developer Transition Kit hardware they released for the PowerPC->Intel and Intel->Apple Silicon transitions. These kinds of things are not only clearly labeled as dev kits they have required paying to join dedicated dev kit programs which expressly forbid getting the (loaned, not bought) device for non-porting or non-development related work. Apple Vision Pro was nothing like that, it had consumer focused announcements at consumer focused events, had consumer ads, sold through the normal consumer channels, and used standard consumer accounts.

The other thing that doesn't line up with this take is how Apple announcing they've cancelled the next Vision Pro to work on a lower cost version is squared up. Even if you still take the Vision Pro as having always been intended a dev kit for early access, needing to cancel the follow on model development to rescope to a lower end product for the market is no less a miss than the initial launch in that the entire program was completely misaligned with the market until well after launch.

I think half of the news stories are a result of Apple pushing this to release to market instead of just shuttering the version internally and the other half are a result of a launch problem like this being relatively rare for the most valuable company in the world and not necessarily about viewing the product itself with blinders.