zlacker

On Apple (as opposed to Magic Leap), I believe a lot of it is figuring out a customer need and audience that can be satisfied by a set of technologies that are just at the edge of mature, and then not shipping the product until it actually satisfies those needs. This means not shipping a technology as a product just because it may be useful in the future, and it means resetting a products at the prototype stage often.

Both are hard for startups to take on. The former because many of the founders are heavily focused on a technology they came up with and attempt to shoehorn it into products that don't quite make sense. The latter because it requires either very patient investors or a big bank account.

Both are also hard for established, mature companies to take on. The former because they seem to believe that innovation for innovations sake is a useful thing to do, and for whatever reason the tech press seems to encourage them. The latter because they are focused on delivering quarterly results over building long term platform and ecosystem value, and because politically a cancelled project can be career ending.