At first, I was a little grumbly when I saw that the control ring doubled as the manual focus ring, but then I thought more about it...
The target market for variable aperture, inexpensive, non-L lenses is beginners/novices who almost universally:
- Shoot in one of the auto-exposure modes.
- Rarely (if ever) use manual focus.
There's a chance that a beginner/novice might only fit one of the above, but I'll bet it's unlikely many novice photographers will regularly use both functions. This makes it a smart compromise in functions (either/or) if it keeps production costs -- and thus price -- down as much as possible.
There will undoubtedly be some enthusiasts who enjoy quality, inexpensive lenses that will miss the dedicated, separate functions, but I'd wager they're in the minority.
As an aside, I think the release of this lens in fairly close proximity to the announcement/release of the R6 points to the R6 filling the RF lineup slot that the 6D filled in the EF lineup. Will be interesting to see...