IMO it wasn’t nearly as egregious as the other examples. I only defend them because they didn’t do this when you replaced the screen etc.

You don’t want phones to work if someone swaps out that specific piece of hardware without your knowledge. Bricking the phone forever makes it harder for people to find back doors around that security feature as they would risk large numbers of expensive phones. Presumably people developing replacement fingerprint readers would notice the issue before most customers where harmed. Further, anyone actually harmed would have gotten hardware from an untrustworthy source.

They reversed course after a backlash, but I can see an argument for them standing their ground on this one.