Robots78

Add me to the disagreers. 

Apple arrives late to many product categories - smart watches and smart speakers are good examples - and letting people know that they have something coming in that category probably prevents people from buying into a competitor's ecosystem.

Take the Apple Watch. If someone reallllly wanted a smart watch, they could've gotten an Android watch, but that of course would function better with an Android phone. So maybe they end up getting one. Now Apple has lost out on the watch sale, the phone sale, and all of the associated future App Store and services revenue. If that person knows the Apple Watch is on the way, they can wait for it, stay in Apple's ecosystem, and keep spending money with Apple.

The AirPad could be in this situation too, but I feel it also has to do with the fact that it seems silly to introduce a new phone with wireless charging and then say "But we don't actually sell wireless chargers."

For the Pro desktop systems, Apple has been underserving that market for a while and is trying to prevent people from jumping ship to Windows. 

I'd also imagine that pre-announcing products reduces the need for such intense secrecy among Apple's employees and suppliers. That level of secrecy has to bring with it some degree of operational drawbacks. 

maciekskontakt said:

That is great. Now all people around the world would have to have device with iOS in order to do messaging. Hmm... may be not what other people want. I do not see Android wold go iCloud somehow. Partitioning people around messaging is not the best approach probably.

I don't really follow... Unless I'm missing something, standard SMS will be used to send and receive with non-iOS devices, just like it is now. The only change is that now iMessages will be stored/synchronized on iCloud instead of locally.