The original marketing was a deliberate deceit to get customers on board. It portrayed a product that could already do everything and could be delivered in Dec 15. Once they had thousands of orders they said, “oh we only meant beta deliveries in Dec 15, production in June 16”.
I find it hard to believe Dan thought that was true either. I didn’t believe it and said at the time that I would be surprised to see it before Dec 16. Surely even if Dan was that naive about product development some of his engineers would had told him it isn’t possible to go from a prototype that didn’t do any of the revolutionary superpowers to mass production with world wide approvals in nine months.
I think the first date Glowforge actually believed was Dec 16. That would be an optimistic project plan but when the beta was six months late that plan would have already been in tatters.