I honestly think if we did what many are suggesting - and post all the features first and hype it up even more, then make the same announcement - it would have gone down worse. Everyone would have accused us of being deceptive, pulling some kind of bait-and-switch scam. We knew this would be a shock to many people, the only question was when to say it. So we chose to say it first, so you know from the start. I'm not surprised, I get the frustration, but I think this is the most transparent and up-front way of doing it.
I'm not sure how to even reply to everyone - for example some people are saying we should have been upfront, and I genuinely think we were, in a way many other companies wouldn't have been. Lots of people are saying we should have announced features - and we did, but they were largely ignored (which we kind of expected). Multiplatform is huge. Chrome OS is huge. I get it, not a big deal if you're already happy with Windows, but that is still aimed squarely at the persistently top feature requests for years - Mac and Linux support. And there's a ton more. We have weeks and weeks of announcements lined up still.
It's strange to me that this is so confusing for you. First off, you should have done market research to find out if your user base wanted a subscription model/browser based IDE. That would have solved all of this before it even started. Second, if you didn't care that it wasn't what most of us wanted, you should have given us the bad news up front like you did, AND give some features that people can get excited about. Even one major feature. But now, on day two, you still haven't released a single feature that is even remotely compelling. I wouldn't even take notice about these things if they were included in an update to C2, let alone as hype for a completely new product. Massive fail so far, in my opinion.