Apple may charge a premium for their devices but they are not stupid otherwise the iPhone would cost far more than it does now. I can almost guarantee that they knew that this would not be a mainstream device and it was them getting their feet wet while the technology catches up to the software.
Maybe they even look at their success with the Apple Watch. When it first came out it was basically positioned as completely different device than it is now where most of the focus is on health with notifications being secondary. So get something out there and learn what people actually want.
Some of the work on the Vision Pro will have an impact on other devices and other way around.
Apple is clearly playing the long game here and maybe it will work, maybe it won't. But there is zero chance that they are abandoning it a year in. And unlike the original Apple Watch, the Vision Pro has a decent amount of compute in it to handle future updates even if a new version does come out.