...all of you are more or less pretending that this is a blatant rip-off from day one or Intel giving the consumer more options.
What no one seems to anticipate is how this will change the market.
Is this a move that will give the customer more options at the same initial price? Yes.
But history has shown time and time again that once a company has the ability to press more money out of a customer, they will.
Be it the scumbag OEM who can now claim speeds of "up to* 3 GHz" or similar, be it Intel who may very well run scary-ish ads and campaigns that urge you upgrade or simply "options" which are really mandatory but the average Joe does not find out until way too late.
This is not about replacing the artificial crippling of CPUs with upgrade options. This is about creating an infrastructure to get more money out of the end customer.
And yes, if you are reading this, chances are you will not fall for it even though it annoy you. Consider yourself lucky. Your parents, friends, etc? Not so much.