To play Apple's advocate, this system will probably never be perfect, and stand up to full scrutinity from everyone on the planet. And they also need the most people possible activated as it's an adverserial feature.

The choice probably looks to them like:

  A - play the game, give everyone a heads up, respond to all feedback, and never ship the feature

 B - YOLO it, weather the storm, have people forget about it after the holiday, and go on with their life.

Wether B works is up to debate, but that was probably their only chance to have it ship from their POV.