Except when the iPhone came out all the reviewers were like "holy shit, this is mind blowing" while with this one everyone is like "it's a shittier oculus quest with some apple polish"
No one is saying shittier oculus quest. It has a much higher resolution and I presume people will get used to letting their eyes linger a bit longer on what they want to click. We’re so used to a mouse paradigm we try to immediately apply that here.
I mean it's been over ten years since the new generation of VR headsets (I'm thinking of the Oculus Rift) came out; if at this point in modern VR development it wouldn't be better than existing offerings, I'd be deeply disappointed in Apple's R&D.
Anyway, I bring that up because when the iphone came out, it really did do something different than the locked-in feature phones of the time; I did have to look it up to refresh my memory (https://www.cnet.com/pictures/original-apple-iphone-competit...), but its competition in that year was a lot of Blackberry-style physical keyboard and resistive touch screens running Windows Mobile. I do want to highlight the LG Prada, the first capacitive touch screen smartphone - came out in the same year the iPhone was announced, and it along with the HTC Touch on that page had a similar screen focused form factor.
I think it's fair to say that having sharp text without screen door alone is doing something different than the existing headsets, and is very important for the more serious uses Apple is imagining.
The verge is probably the most critical. Here’s what they say:
“marvelous display, great hand and eye tracking, and works seamlessly in the ecosystem, … The Apple Vision Pro is the best consumer headset anyone's ever made”
Yes, they also list a bunch of flaws. But the people trying to make out that the reviews are saying it’s a shittier oculus quest are not being honest.