My questions (even as EXP and United Gold) were different than yours.
I would say that they have realized (a bit late) that using EQD running totals as the decider means that the same people always get the upgrades and they have discovered that they need a way to bring upgrades to more people, as well as a way to extract more revenue (or miles) from upgrades.
The odd thing to me was that there was no mention of killing the copay on mileage upgrades, which would be a nice thing to do for elites.
Also, the two confirmable at any time SWUs could simply for a 1-for-2 arrangement (for twice as many upgrade points you can confirm an upgrade at any time).
I would also have liked to tell them ti kill complementary upgrades for a few and give everyone (in differing amounts) confirmable domestic upgrade vouchers. That would still be completely fair to everyone but would spread out the upgrade benefits to more people.