I would just add that, while I'll agree that it is certainly not an "essential" function, that could be said of many features of LV. There are certain degrees of "non-essential-ness" and some of those non-essential features would only be stripped away over my dead body. Now, while the connector pane property is not one that I care deeply about (I've never actually used it), I can see its utility - particularly as a development tool. In particular, if you had a library of a lot of functions with idenitical connector panes (happens often enough) and you wanted to change some connector from being "optional" to being "required", it appears you could accomplish this easily
en masse with the ConPane property node.
That said, I can definitely see NI's point of view. It's not so much that these sort of esoteric "power-user" features would be a drain on NI support (after all, there aren't that many people that are going to use them). It's more that they probably have significant chunks of code that they plan on potentially changing from release to release (we can all relate to that) and they don't want folks to go off and rely on any of that functionality because there's a darn good chance that your code will get deprecated in the next release. And clearly nobody wants to see that happen.
But here's what I do take some degree of issue with...
Taking away functionality should be something reserved for whole-number releases. If LV9 doesn't have the ConPane node, nobody's going to be too shocked. However, if you write some code in 8.0 and then 8.20 comes out, you have every right to expect that it should work - especially considering that many of us feel that 8.20 came out
on the heels of 8.0. I don't think I'm alone in this expectation. It's how we've been conditioned as development environment consumers.
As companies go, I practically worship at the altar of NI. LV is one of the most brilliant and powerful software tools ever devised; NI's product line as a whole is more-or-less consistently powerful, robust and easy to use; Their support is quite frankly second-to-none; The NI pros in this forum are freakin' awesome; And I truly believe that NI conscientiously keeps an eye out for the best interests of its customers. However, I think they made a (albeit very minor) mistake here, and we have a little justification in registering some small gripes.
We're the guys that buy the products. We have an obligation to ourselves to help direct NI in shaping those products.
Respectfully,
Nick
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya
LabVIEW user groep 
