My mother, who does't have a lot of money has her iPad 2 ruined by this upgrade. She's not a techie and when the upgrade was offered she thought she might need it for security reasons. It's so easy for people like you to take the blunt attitude that you do because you don't mind when perfectly good hardware is sidelined and you have the money to ditch a 3 year old machine for a new one. But not everyone does.
Apple should have said that the IPad 2 was not suitable for this upgrade and blocked it. My son's phone is an old Samsung running Android 2. Samsung did not make any upgrade to its OS after 2 because it was not up to running it. That is the logical and responsible thing to do.
For you, with the easy availability of money and tech know-how, these things don't matter. Ditch it and get a new one. But some people are not like you and they should not be left high and dry. In my case, I have a Samsung tablet on the way to replace my iPad and I can afford that but I am still annoyed that a perfectly good piece of kit is being binned. I may buy my mother a new tablet because I feel embarrassed that my buying advice has let her down but I'm not happy about it.
With the iPhone problem and this, I think Apple have let themselves and their customers down. I understand that you don't think so but I do think you should be able to see a different point of view. Alienating customers is never a good thing - there is competition out there, even if you think it is irrelevant and people should buy Apple no matter what.
Apple make fine products but after sales and goodwill do matter.