There were OS support when fastram arrived (obviously). Since their chipset supported 4 megs of chipram (14 megs on later machines), they didn’t have to worry about slowram etc. So it wasn’t really an issue for them.
I'd add that honestly people weren't really complaining about the ST's speed at the time it was current. It beat the Mac and PC for horsepower and price.
While it was kind of a crappy games machine compared to the Amiga, it certainly was better than a PC or a Mac, and as an all around general home productivity computer was the best value for the $ out there at the time. Which I think was the Tramiel's aim.