Honestly, I think the best alternative in this case would have been to degrade performance (btw, it's a very very slight degradation that most users would not even notice in routine use) and also inform the user.
But I agree with you, in that I do hope Apple has learned from this ordeal. I just wanted to speak out against what I see as very unfair, bad-faith attacks.
By the way, isn't it nice when the hardware manufacturer doesn't degrade performance on failing hardware but instead tells the user?