In your opinion, only those products with API's available today should be announced? That sounds overly restrictive. By the same logic - Projects Jacquard and Vault shouldn't have been announced either.
I think it's fair to announce products so devs can be ready when the API becomes available.
First of all, "there were a couple things tacked on to the presentation that maybe could one day be used by a developer" is a pretty desperate argument, given that the keynote was three hours long and focussed on a ton of things that don't have any API at all, like Photos, and did not mention a single implication for a developer even for the things which had APIs, such as Now on Tap (which means that developers had no reason to bother going to the sessions on that feature, as it was clearly something designed for end users only; apparently it actually has a couple APIs).
However, sure: I'll bite. No: announcing random stuff that we can't play with and that they won't talk to us about is totally useless for developer. This entire event was just about causing people to go "wow, they are smart". I am a developer quite interested in 3D video, and so despite seeing Project Jump and going "ugh, another end-user product announcement", I figure I might as well talk to the engineers about it: only, they aren't willing to say anything about what might be available or how it works or essentially anything about their plans... so good luck "getting ready".
Regardless, the next thing you really need to defend, as this is what we are talking about: what are you, as a developer, doing to get ready for Photos? Google I/O has become less and less developer-focussed ever since it started (I have gone every year), and has turned into more and more of just a showcase of their end-user products. This year as the epitome, and all of the developers that I know who attended were quite disappointed; even the ones who still liked last year's somehow were now also saying "this event seems to have lost its purpose and is no longer useful".
I think a keynote should be more of 10,000 foot view
> Regardless, the next thing you really need to defend, as this is what we are talking about: what are you, as a developer, doing to get ready for Photos?
You can't imagine how unlimited storage of images and videos have no implications to devs and how we view curation of photos? Thats one less limitation to worry about.
I 100% agree that I/O is becoming less and less developer focused. Lots of non-developers want to attend (I blame the freebies they gave - looks like that has stopped so it might get better). I/O (or any other 'developer' conference) goes beyond the technical. There is a lot of self-promotion, PR, recruitment (in the HR sense, and recruitment into the 'developer ecosystem')
I think it's fair to announce products so devs can be ready when the API becomes available.