I don't share your sentiment about the guy, but that's OK.

Apple has a style, and he talks with that style very well, preventing the listener from drifting off.

I'm German and I don't hear anything wrong about the voice. He's probably not a native speaker, give the guy some slack.

I had a similar reaction at first. But, for whatever reason, when playing the video at 1.5x it felt completely fine.

the narrator is an actual engineer, not a television personality

but he is cosplaying television personality for no reason

That often happens when people who don’t do much public speaking do public speaking.

you could never hear the audio that cleanly on a VHS even with HiFi tracks.

It is about attitude in voice, not about audio quality. It is very noticeable at 1.5x speed, 1x speed is too slow anyway with infinite pauses for such low density technical details.

It’s an engineer and they provide a transcription.