I really don't mind the increase in the price of F awards. I always thought it was ridiculous that I'd get a J award for 140k and the F award was only 180k or so. That just never made sense and I can see why the airline needs to fix it.
What gets my goat here is the increased price to fly partners. UA doesn't fly everywhere. And even when they DO fly, they may not have many seats. Case in point is just yesterday I booked J seats for the wife and her friend to visit India. There was absolutely no saver availability whatsoever on United metal, so they're going on Lufthansa. Now United is not only withholding inventory from me, they're penalizing me for it.
The only small silver lining I can see here is that if UA metal J awards are more expensive, it gets easier to use GPUs.
I would also be less upset if the corresponding price increase on J saver awards led to more saver award inventory being opened up.