Should customers of a product be forced to either spend 100$ for a new product and generate more ewaste, or tinker with their device leaving it in an unsupported perhaps even out of warranty state?

Maybe some people are happy with either option, but it sure is unethical to force that choice, especially when all the effort it could have taken from the manufacturer was to add a boolean flag.

I'd complain too, not everyone is in the same situation, and this is dodgy behavior anyway regardless of me liking the workarounds or not, simply having to workaround is bad enough in principle.