I understand it seems weird with hardware, but I think it's similar to how we charge for software. Try this thought experiment: 1. Based on market analysis, I

I understand it seems weird with hardware, but I think it's similar to how we charge for software. Try this thought experiment: 1. Based on market analysis, Intel decides it could sell a part with hyperthreading for $1K, and one without for $500. 2. Engineers start building both chips. 3. Because the chips themselves cost little to make ($45 and $50 for non-HT vs HT let's say?), and it costs $10M of engineering time to design each chip, engineers realize it would actually be far more efficient to design one chip with hyperthreading, and disable it for the lower-end SKU. I'm curious which part you object to in this sequence. The sale price of chips is mostly amortizing very high R&D costs, not unit distribution costs. There are a variety of different types of customers to serve with different price points, while designing different chips is expensive, so it ends up being logical to make one chip with different features enabled. Software and web services are the ultimate expression of this kind of economics. It costs almost 0 to serve an additional customer, but a lot of R&D and operations to build it. Would you call a web service "intentionally damaged" when they don't give you all features for the same price (or for free?)