There have been mistakes in the past, but this is something that should have been caught immediately, which suggests that they were aware of it at release.
Is it just nostalgia goggles telling me that Jobs would not have let these out the door?
It appears the i9 isn't a good fit for thin and light laptops (Apple's also not the only one using the i9 in this form factor). Of course, a laptop using this i9 and properly cooling it is not going to be small or pretty[1].
Getting back to Apple, there are a couple of ways of looking at this.
For people who are bursting (as opposed to doing long running sustained loads) the i9 is probably the fastest Macbook Pro you can get. For people who are using optimized media apps like FCP, this is also not necessarily a bad buy, since you'll likely reap the benefits of the faster CPU.
For people who are doing sustained loads and/or running non-optimized apps like Premiere, this is probably not a good Macbook Pro to buy. For people who care a lot about getting advertised baseline clock rates, irrespective of bottom line performance gains, this is also not the Macbook Pro to buy.
For some, it's an easy choice, and for others, it's complicated.
I mean, Apple sourced the chip and shipped the laptop, and you pay Apple. I don't see how you _can't_ blame Apple engineering for this?
Which is why I said "not blameless"
Hopefully the firmware can take care of the issue for those impacted.
Looking at the Macbook Pro design, it is suppose to be able to cool the Radeon 560X which has a TDP of 75W with a similar set of fin sizes and fans on the opposing side. This should mean in theory be able to handle even a grossly overpowered CPU. I think they can fix it.