Apple is alot of things I don't like, but stupid (from a profit/business standpoint) isn't one. Apple sell alot of products that I think are hot garbage and would be embarrassed to own, but they're not for me as a consumer, and they tend to sell a bazillion of whatever it is and make a ton of money.
Even trying to put my biases aside though, I cannot fathom what their gameplan with this is though. Even if it was a good deal and great product, a pretty huge proportion of VR headset purchasers are PC gamers, and that generally isn't a demographic that is Apple leaning. So the buyer for this is a person who uses VR regularly (probably a PC gamer), but also someone who is Apple leaning enough to get this vs. an Index or Vive, who also is willing to pay an A.B.S.U.R.D price premium for it (it is pretty impressive hardware to be fair, but not 3-4 times the cost impressive).
My guess is that they're intentionally taking a loss on this, putting it out as a halo product that gets talked about a ton (that's already happening because of the price, like they did with the mac pro wheels), and generally get a ton of attention on this without selling many (but just enough to get user data and hardware information to iterate on) and THEN in a suitable amount of time they'll release one that will genuinely be competitive, at a big price drop, and sell a ton.