He knew how to stay on message, and he knew that saying "our SDK will probably be released in alpha form in a year and be somewhat stable in two years" was off message.
Reminds me of “we couldn’t get the fingerprint sensor under the screen working, so we had to quickly come up with an alternate authentication method, and that required this hideous notch” vs “Face ID is the newest, best thing ever.”
They still try to hide it when things don’t go their way.