opus 4.6 was going to be sonet 5 up until week of release. The price bump is even bigger than you realize because they don't let you run opus 4.6 at full speed unless you pay them an extra 10x for the new "fast mode"

If that's true, it would be surprising; the current Sonnet 4.6 is not in the same league as either Opus 4.5 or 4.6, either anecdotally or on benchmarks.

why is that surprising?