On Quest 2 it's the exact same process, you have to create a developer account (sometimes verify a credit card or phone number) and have a companion phone to enable developer mode. In fact you need to have a companion phone to use either headset at all. I had problems pairing my Quest 2 headset with my phone initially and the headset was just a useless brick until it's set up with an account through a phone app and a brittle pairing process.

For the Quest 1 too. It's always been this way.

Weird. Maybe I've always been given a Quest that was already setup or rooted. I've never bought one myself. I only ran into this issue recently with a Quest 3. Every Quest 1 and 2 I've used I could enable developer mode and do what I wanted. adb just worked after enabling developer mode.

Yeah the developer mode toggle only shows up if you have the developer flag on your account. Maybe you had it switched on at some point? You also need this to run sidequest for example.

I've always had it too because I already had a developer account with them since the first Rift devkit.

Like a Google account? I’ve always been curious if that actually had ever been a showstopper for anyone other than very niche tech circles.