The DM has always chosen what items a pc gets.Thanks for the clarification. however, that is still a little upsetting, since those books were marketed to players and not GMs... but since they're uncommon items, it will be the GM who decides which ones you get, since PCs can only choose their own common items, right?
The 4e DMG advice is to encourage players to create a wishlist of items they'd like to get. It is still up to the DM to decide what treasure to place. So, the new rarities really don't change anything, except item creation.
Item creation is clearly no longer as useful as it once was.