I haven’t done it either, but the explanation is present in multiple other threads. Either way, I don’t know the “intent” of the developers, and I haven’t seen you cite a statement of them either.
One way to avoid abuse, if this counts as abuse, is to automatically put the first listed affix on the item if the game crashes. Another way is to give each item a random “seed” that determines the result of rng crystals (like obsidian, sapphire, ruby, etc.) and only changes once an affix from that crystal is actually applied. Then if you crash the game before applying affix you will get the same result the next time. As far as I know they have not attempted either of these.
If this is abuse, I agree, this thread should probably be purged. I just don’t know if they consider it abuse.