Meta severely underplays those capabilities. I've always known they're "there", but it's not their preferred presentation of the device. It also takes a bit of "power user" to be comfortable doing much of what you're describing.
I'm not even sure if AVP can side load apps or watch movies over SFTP, but I don't think it matters at this point: the global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader now, and personally I don't think it's the hardware driving the difference. Strangely, I think it came down to "look n feel" for a lot of it.
They definitely underplay it - Meta is big on services, selling people a quest for sideloading or Blu-Ray streaming probably threatens their bottom line. Hard to blame them when the hardware costs the same as a Switch though. At the price Apple is asking (and the hardware margins they enjoy), I'd expect more capabilities than just spatialized iOS. I'm not sure the Apple customers in my life would buy a Vision Pro even if it was the same price as an iPhone.
> the global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader now
Besides Casey Neistat and Mark Gurman, I'm really not hearing much from the "global mindshare" anymore. The Quest didn't really get any fanfare either, but it did move units and get market penetration from the start. Apple is on a slow roll right now, and until they get Half Life: Alyx or MSFS2020-tier system sellers, I'm not sure the in-group will even consider them on-par with PCVR. Given Apple's audience, I half expect their biggest VR competitor to be Sony's PSVR2.
It's possible Apple isn't truly interested in typical VR/AR gameplay, or at least the way we (and Meta) have been thinking about it. The high price (as of now) and focus on utility leads me to think their long term game here is as a complement to macbooks, and AVP is a Display replacement, rather than a standalone unit. I can see them pushing this on Enterprise customers a lot.
Time will tell. I worked at a startup that bought Apple Silicon build servers day-and-date with announcement (despite our stack not building on ARM). There is certainly a demand for anything with the "made in Cupertino" label.
I'm not even sure if AVP can side load apps or watch movies over SFTP, but I don't think it matters at this point: the global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader now, and personally I don't think it's the hardware driving the difference. Strangely, I think it came down to "look n feel" for a lot of it.