It's not a controversial opinion, it really was all marketing and polishing existing tech like the airpods. When the ipod was first revealed, even apple fanboys at the time thought it was going to be a flop given the competition used common io, didn't require proprietary software, and didn't require a proprietary OS, and also was nearly half the price.
The Reality Distiortion Field turned out to be in this guy's head :)
Seriously, many technical people underestimate the power of "bringing X to the masses" by making a beautiful, easy polished, effortless UX. UX (usually) trumps functionality.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apples-ipod-spurs-mixed-reactions/
This forum thread from the 2001 release is pretty funny:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...