I don’t think Vision Pro was intended as a mass consumer product. There is so much cost reduction they could have done on the device that they didn’t do to hit a lower price point, and it’s obvious to everyone that $3500 wasn’t going to sell a lot of units (and it must have been obvious to Apple execs as well).

My guess is it is basically a real world survey of how people would use such a device, and what developers would do with it. Then they could later focus on a cheaper product that is only a display, or a product that is only a media viewer, or a product that focuses on VR/AR applications while deemphasizing other use cases.

This is the version of reality that doesn’t require anyone to be stupid. In my experience if a reality candidate requires that someone is just really really stupid to arrive at the outcome (in this case Apple execs), probably you are missing something about someone’s perspective.