Despite near-unlimited capital and distribution, Apple's most impressive innovation in the last decade has been a thinner iPhone. This is viewed as a major failure of vision and a massive missed opportunity for a company positioned to lead in new technological frontiers.

Founders often get stuck endlessly perfecting a product, believing it must be flawless before launch. This is a fallacy, as "perfection" is subjective. The correct approach is to launch early and iterate based on real market feedback, as there is no perfect time to start.

Despite analysts viewing live sports as a prime use case for the Apple Vision Pro, Apple's F1 partnership announcement omits plans for immersive 3D or spatial content. This failure to connect a major content acquisition with its new flagship hardware represents a significant missed opportunity to drive hardware adoption.

The Neural Engine, the specialized AI chip in iPhones, was a direct result of the canceled Apple Car project. It was designed to power a self-driving car's AI and was later shrunk for the phone. Without the car project, Apple would be even further behind in on-device AI.

Luckey argues analysts misunderstand the Vision Pro's strategy. At $3,500, it's not a mass-market product. Its goal is to make VR highly desirable and aspirational. By solving the "want" problem first, Apple primes the market for future, lower-cost versions, avoiding the trap of making a cheap product nobody wants.

Unlike software, hardware iteration is slow and costly. A better approach is to resist building immediately and instead spend the majority of time on deep problem discovery. This allows you to "one-shot" a much better first version, minimizing wasted cycles on flawed prototypes.

Unlike pure software, a product combining hardware, software, and content can't be validated with a "smaller, crappier version." The core user experience—the "fun"—only emerges when all components are polished and working together seamlessly, a moment that often arrives very late in the development cycle.

Apple's failure to provide immersive, 3D spatial video for its new F1 partnership is a major missed opportunity for the Vision Pro. Live sports are a primary driver for VR/AR adoption. Offering only a standard 2D broadcast in a virtual environment fails to create a differentiated experience that would justify the hardware's cost for hardcore fans and drive platform adoption.

The fact that only 3,000 apps have been built specifically for Vision OS is a major red flag. Historically, developers flock to new Apple platforms to gain a first-mover advantage. This lack of enthusiasm indicates the platform's core flywheel—attracting developers to create content that attracts users—is failing.