Apple's brand trades a lot on having extremely well finished products with very polished experiences. If they started experimenting left and right like Google does, they would lose that brand image, which is arguably their most valuable asset (even above and beyond the technology itself). If Google releases Glass and it flops, it hardly affects their image ('well, yes, it's cool technology, that's what Google does, but I don't think people want it for now...'), if Apple does the same it would be thousands of articles about how Apple is losing its touch and can't possible survive without Steve Job's genius.
Maybe the only way around that is taking a page out of Alphabet's playbook and making a parent company with "riskier" subsidiaries with their own non-Apple brand?
Maybe the only way around that is taking a page out of Alphabet's playbook and making a parent company with "riskier" subsidiaries with their own non-Apple brand?