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.
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...