We were sharing pictures using infrared links before that. It sucks, 90% of the time it doesn’t work properly and if it works it’s extremely slow.

That’s why people share their pictures on WhatsApp, Snapchat or whatever.

Apple isn’t going to implement a service if the experience sucks, they’ll implement an alternative that doesn’t suck. Sometimes it’s limited to their ecosystem and sometimes it isn’t. If you don’t like it, use one of the alternatives.