What exactly are they going to Sherlock?
iOS non-game apps aren't exactly innovative. It's Gmail. It's YouTube. It's social media photo and video scrolls. It's been more than a decade, and the most innovative thing I can find on top downloads and top grossing, Duolingo, is also kind of a game, like if you remove the game part of it it's kind of not much, is it? All the innovations in Google Maps are kind of tied up in backend technologies that aren't specific to the phone at all, indeed predated it.
Once they figured out touchscreen keyboard and accelerated web browsing sort of everything else fell into place. Then the retina display was introduced, and software improved the camera. I don't know what roles 3rd party devs played in all of this, but those list of innovations happened years ago.
They don't Sherlock games.
Even then, is Apple going to approve a game with guns on the AVP? Time will tell. Beatsaber is an innovative game but it leaned on the basic premise of people doing something illegal, uploading non licensed maps and tracks.
Hacker News commenters don't know much about making games - even when they work for huge game studios! - and they don't know much about VR - even when they work at companies making VR headsets!
Hugo must certainly be aware of the Varjo XR3, which is actually the most comparable device to the AVP and even more expensive, but there were developers at Apple on the AVP team who never heard of it, and many more Oculus developers.
At the end of the day this is a love letter to halo product positioning coupled with relentless vendor lock-in applied to helpless consumers. I agree with you that the locked down nature of the product makes it as DoA for developers as the Apple Watch was. People forget that the first apps for iPhones were delivered via jailbreaks made by hackers, who had unlimited access, and that plus Steam ultimately teed up what limited things you can do in iOS apps today, not brilliant strategy.