The "battery slowdown" was only in place for a year or so before it was widely known.

Not really. Based on your follow-up responses, it seems that you're conflating the slowdown on older hardware running new software versions (which is standard with any software update as new features will never run as quickly on older hardware as they would on new hardware) with the throttling done for older batteries. This wasn't done intentionally to slow down the devices so that people would buy newer models it was done for the opposite reason - to extend the daily longevity of phones whose batteries were nearing an efficiency target where they would require service. The mistake Apple made was not directly stating that this was being done to conserve battery life as the alternative was for the phones to simply shut down completely.

> I don't believe so - I don't think they ever explained that older phones were being throttled, but I don't think they denied it in the face of accusations, did they?

My memory is that it was common knowledge for several years that upgrading the OS to a version more than 3-4 years past the hardware release would cause a dramatic performance hit. For as long as I had access to an iphone, that was a known issue, as in, many people with older iphones would agree, any apple forum would have topics about it. Maybe it got more press coverage in the year leading up to the admission. Maybe there were multiple factors and the one they admitted became prominent in that year.

Oh sure, newer versions of iOS used to slow things down, but there are two separate issues.

1. Do increasingly heavy OS releases slow older machines (yes. Though ios12 has reversed this trend.)

2. Does iOS deliberately throttle older machines.

The latter is the particular issue. It relates to 2 or 3 iPhone models with only when they have dodgy batteries, so I don’t think the accusation of generally nerfing old phones really holds.

I do agree, however that Apple absolutely should have made it clear what was happening. Very poor communication, but not, I think malicious

Fair points