> I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business.

It’s called Expectation Management. It’s how successful business is done.

Marketing 101: Under promise, over deliver.

P.S. Apple is quite good at this IMHO. I notice they often very quickly go from product announcement to product availability. My theory for why this is good is that there less time in between for people’s imagination to run wild and fill in the information gaps with their own ideas that the actual product might not satisfy. Expectations remain ground when their customers receive the product vs a product getting hyped to the moon such that it’s practically impossible for it to ever live up to the hype.