The technology was definitely a milestone - the first commercially available personal computer, which incorporated GUI concepts invented at Xerox PARC. The fact that they ended up competing with themselves is just one of the many mistakes that leave you wondering.

The Macintosh initially wasn't a success either, which was one the reasons Jobs was fired from Apple. Apple’s decision to develop and launch the Macintosh while the Lisa was still on the market is widely seen as a major factor in the Lisa’s commercial failure. The Lisa was better than the original Macintosh in several key areas (more memory, bigger screen, more floppy storage capacity, multitasking, memory protection, expandability, integrated office suite). So no, Macintosh was not v2, but just a cheaper alternative.