It's possible that was deliberate but they don't usually announce things they don't originally plan on releasing as that can damage their reputation. Possible that they truly couldn't meet deadlines or that they were purposely trying to create hype, hard to say without being upper management in Apple
I've been off apple products for over a decade now other than my 2012 macbook that I basically just use as an exclusively youtube player so I'm not too familiar with Apple Intelligence, it looks like it's their proprietary AI algorithm so in that case, it's less staggered release and more the fact that AI gets better the more it is interacted with.
A marketing prof once told me that a lot of phone companies, Apple in specific, split their projects up into several releases as a form of planned obsolescence. You're more likely to find this in matured and established brand names because they have the power of goodwill to retain their market share whereas an up and coming company relies on being innovative in the sense of being early adopters of new, sometimes not fully tested, technology.
So for example, you see 3 iPhones being released in the span of 2 years. Those were likely 1 project released in a deliberately staggered manner so that "fanboys" "early movers" "brand loyal" (basically materialistic people who either don't understand or love being manipulated by corps) will pay for 1 project that a team worked on, 3 separate times.
The dragonballs from the manga/anime dragonball summon shenron the dragon when you collect them all and you're allowed to make 1 wish, even including bringing people back from the dead
I do enjoy that at times because I'm generally a curious person that likes to learn. Someone told me it's a sign of autism once but that person was also an idiot in many aspects.
This is what made it work for me, I was looking down a hallway then glanced at that pic keeping my head and phone still then letting it focus on the picture as if it was in the distance, the amount of detail is so crazy
Maybe I have it mixed up then because the way I'm doing it is losing focus and letting it adjust until I see something. I thought I was going crosseyed but I didn't have a mirror so I can't be sure.
Oh you're a crafty one aren't ya