This is not a story about a company failing because they hid product capabilities from their customers and were underappreciated because people didn’t realize how good their product was. This is a story of a company over promising in their marketing and failing to deliver.
I stand by what I said in the context of this story, which is what we are discussing. if you don’t know if you can deliver a feature don’t put it out there that you’re trying to make the feature. If customers know you’re working on something and then you can’t deliver they feel like they lost that thing. If they don’t know that you’re working on it and you pull it out of the hat before lunch or even in a post launch update everyone is excited because they feel like they got something extra for free. Obviously on launch you should explain the full capabilities of your product. But again that is not the context of this story.
Apple Caved. I’m no apple fan but what exactly would not caving have been here? Make the backdoor? Pull out of the UK ? Fund an expensive legal battle against the laws of a democratically elected government?