> If that was their intention then I suspect they would have mentioned it alongside this announcement to provide a justification and quell the (justified) outrage.

It’s August. New iPhones and iOS / macOS are released in September. If they want to introduce E2E encryption for photos and need this in place to do it, then it makes sense to announce this ahead of time and get the backlash out of the way so that they can announce the headline feature during the main event without it being overshadowed.