Negative hype can kill a product that could have been good.

Positive false hype can deceive people into wasting money.

Sure, complete honesty would be ideal, but if you say "well it sucks right now but we promise it will be ok when you buy it", not many people would rush to order one.

And they shouldn't. It's just another way of saying "people acting rationally based on truthful information"

Many good products never made it to market because of insufficiently good perception.

That should be a separate issue. It's not the only available path, just one often taken because it's the most forgiving of shoddy business practices, doesn't justify its existence, either.

On the flip side, creating positive hype out of smoke and mirrors can be used to kill a competitor's product for no good reason, so it's not quite ok either.

I think people are starting to realize the depth of corporate deception and bad-faith practices and how that affects everyone at large, and so they're rightly tired of them and trying to reset it all back to simple, effective, and fair ethical standards.

Strictly for presentation ahead of time I think it's borderline.

I disagree, I think this is equally as bad. These presentations are still false advertising, just to a different audience.

These presentations are selling investors and press and attention on something that doesn't exist yet. Sure, sometimes it works out where the product works, but other times, it's wasted money from investors and attention from the public that wasn't warranted.

I don't see this any differently than the current shit show with The Day Before. Both are promising smoke and mirrors. Apple succeeded and is praised and people are here defending it saying it's okay. The Day Before didn't, and everyone's at their throats saying it shouldn't be allowed and that they should be sued for false advertising and for the amount of time wasted on hype for something that never came.