Crease distortion occurs immediately, day 1, first fold, and it's a substantial distortion.... but does not necessarily get exponentially worse like normal fatiguing plastic, but instead just gets worse slowly. Yeah it'll last 50k folds but the crease distortion is definitely there in person.

This is Apple; they value different things than most people… sometimes warranted, results in offering a much better experience, and pushes everything forward (see MagSafe -> Qi2 for recent example), other times they’re just regarded as late adopters. The detraction of visual aesthetics from folding crease is apparently one of such things that they care about.