Your New Snickers bar in new 2019 packaging
Contains less Sugar and coco solids and now in 60g Bars (previously 65g )
But STILL THE SAME VALUE PRICE
Of course I see the difference. But that is not same thing as here. Those candy bars are still labeled as "Snickers" - not a different model number as the two processors above. The higher priced CPU does have a higher processor speed so at least you are getting more there (though no graphics). But point being, it is not being sold as the same product.
A few years ago when my dad passed (oddly, your dad passed on my mom's birthday), I was cleaning out a long forgotten bathroom closet and found a package of Charmin toilet paper and a few bars of bath soap. Both must have been in that closet for 20 years or longer.
I was immediately surprised to "feel" how heavy the bars of soap were compared to newly purchased bars of the same brand - yet the bars were the same size and shape. Then I realized what they did. They "whipped" a HUGE amount of air into the soap during production. This explains why I alone can go through a bar of soap in a couple weeks today when, 50 years ago when I was a kid, a bar of soap lasted at least that long with 4 people taking daily baths/showers.
It was similar with the toilet paper - the marketing hype over "quilted" toilet paper makes you cleaner is pure bull. All quilting does is make each layer on the roll take up more thickness. So you end up getting fewer layers, thus less paper on each roll. But more surprising was the width of the old toilet paper. It was a full 5 inches wide and actually fit on the holder. Go look at roll today and it will barely be 4 1/4 inches wide.
It was the same experience I found with new (but old) boxes I found with Kleenix. Today's tissues are not as wide or long, and there are fewer sheets in the box.
"New and Improved", my a$$.
Remember when a 3lb can of coffee really weighed 3lbs?
but walking away from a sale where I was sold a "defective" product for the same price as a non-defective product just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
That would me too. But you are inaccurately calling something "defective" in this scenario. If the 2nd CPU did not work
as marketed, that would be "defective".
What you are alluding too is actually a very common manufacturing practice. Way back in the day,
all floppy disks were manufactured as DSDD (double sided-double density). They were then tested and if a side failed testing, it might be labeled and sold as SSDD (single sided-double density) or SSSD (single side-single density). But like these CPUs, they were labeled as different products.
The happens today with RAM. RAM is often manufactured as faster RAM but if it cannot pass testing at those faster speeds, it is often labeled and marketed as slower RAM. Does that mean it is defective? I guess it depends on how you look at it, but if the products actual performance at least meets the product specs, I don't call that defective.