[mikestew]

The alternative would have been something similar to the Samsung/Galaxy Fold issue.

Nope, there's another alternative: announce it when it's sitting in the backroom of every Apple store, like back in the old days. I'm sure Apple has their reasons for not doing that much anymore, but it would have avoided this very issue.

[scarface74]

Even in the Jobs era they pre announced the “3Ghz G5” that never happened and the AppleTV that did. Of course they preannounced the iPhone by 6 months.