I don't think it was malice, it was probably just an honest mistake. Apple comes out with a larger laptop than the 15", and Intel comes out with a processor better than the i7: as an engineer, you can put 2 and 2 together. I totally see how they'd think that a larger version of their i5 laptop could handle the i9. Apple's cooling is designed around low-wattage chips though, and those i9s are consuming much more power than an i7 for much less relative performance scaling. It also didn't help that they were keen on marketing it as a new-age mobile workstation, which was really not the case for a lot of daily users.

The whole thing came together to create a disappointing product. Pretty much the only saving grace of those machines was their really-good Bootcamp performance, but it was no reason to pay $3,000+ for one.

I don't personally think it was malice. More a part of the stream of form over function decisions that lead to losing the ports, the years-long keyboard debacle, stagelight display failures, etc.