The European Union has some directives on Standby Power, and Power efficiency in general
My take is that "auto", is Mikrotik's response to the regulators, so that "out of the box" the devices operate in a "power-conscious way"
The difference power-wise may not be huge in RB5009 or the Hap's, but is very clear in the multicore-arm CCR's and some newer CRS's.
Maybe what we need in the long run, is some setting to "nudge" the governor
minimum-freq setting for latency sensitive scenarios
maximum-freq for power/temperature/stability sensitive scenarios
maybe even have some governor profiles to select from (power, performance, ballanced)
And since v7 can dynamically adjust the cpu frequency, that setting should no longer be in the "bootloader" section, or at least not locked under device-mode
Even for older devices where the cpu-frequency is set at boot-time by Routerboot, i don't see the rationale in locking the setting.
I haven't seen any evidence of malware setting cpu-frequency in malicious ways?
All reasonable points, but that’s forgetting the true problem here is that people have loads of devices that cannot be changed anymore because device-mode restricted them from functioning correctly and are unable to be changed by the administrator who put the device there because MikroTik rug-pulled that feature and put it behind a physical barrier without your authorization.