"... it seems like they were worried that the Mac was increasingly marginalized as a platform for AR/VR development ..."
If, by "worried", you mean: they went out of their way to smite and thrash the organic core of their customer base, ignored their most basic requests, and deleted five years from their product lifecycle (nobody used the trashcan mac pro) ... then yes, I suppose they might be worried.
Maybe they noticed how many copies of High Sierra are running on firmware-modded 2009/2010 mac pros ?
If, by "worried", you mean: they went out of their way to smite and thrash the organic core of their customer base, ignored their most basic requests, and deleted five years from their product lifecycle (nobody used the trashcan mac pro) ... then yes, I suppose they might be worried.
Maybe they noticed how many copies of High Sierra are running on firmware-modded 2009/2010 mac pros ?