Things go wrong sometimes after announcing a product.
> that could be fraud
No, it is certainly not.
It’s not that common, except today’s Apple and, well, Tesla, to announce early and be very late delivering.
It’s a solid spec bump to a product. Not a huge leap (which is there is no 2 in the name) but it’s not like they were ONLY going to work with the AirPower and had no other new features.
No reason to cancel them.
Apple isn't the only one. While I agree that announcing a product and not delivering is a bad thing - shit happens, especially here where the engineering team busted balls for months to correct and issue and they couldn't resolve it.
Sometimes, it is safety or regulatory failure. There are many reasons why a product can't make it to the market.
Contrary to your point:
A. They announced the cancellation a week later, you still have time to return your AirPods 2.
B. If they had gone with substandard product, then you will still complain, why didn't Apple cancel this product a long time ago!? Why did they release this piece of shit? We will have #AirPowerGate storm on Twitter, armchair specialists would start analyzing and delivering nasty analysis about Apple, Louis Rossman would make a new angry video, etc... Jeez guys.
See, Apple is in a no-win situation here. No matter what they do, people complain obsessively without understanding and putting yourself in their shoes.