While keeping revenues and margin is certainly a priority, I think the bigger issue is a desire to not split the Apple userbase across multiple iOS versions.

"Less than a year after release, iOS 12 has reached 88% of all active iOS devices" [0]

By contrast, Android has an insane amount of fragmentation, though the link is outdated, at the time, Marshmellow 6.0 had the most users, at 16.9% of all Android users, while Android 9 had just 10.4% (this was 10 months after Android 9 had been released) [1]

I know this comparison isn't perfect by any means. Apart from the differing time frames, Android has more use cases than just mobile devices. Nonetheless, the difference is staggering.

[0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ios-distribution-news/

[1] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

I'm not sure how this is relevant. Throttling has been present in iOS since at least version 10 (2016), if not longer - IIRC 10 added the settings UI to override throttling if you want to, but I'm not sure when the actual capability landed.

Preventing ecosystem fragmentation is well and good, but it's orthogonal to publicizing that the OS does CPU throttling on devices with batteries whose power delivery is compromised by age, and making clear that a cheap battery replacement will do as much to solve that problem as an expensive new phone will.

(I do my own refurbs, so I can vouch from experience for a battery replacement solving throttling. There's no deliberate derating of older devices qua older devices that I can see, but it's reasonable that people believe there is, because Apple has done a terrible job of making clear what's actually going on. One of many cases where their habitual allergy to transparency has harmed them and their userbase alike; it's hard to blame kremlinologists for being kremlinologists when that's the only way to try to figure out what the hell your company is doing.)

> IIRC 10 added the settings UI to override throttling if you want to, but I'm not sure when the actual capability landed.

11.3 in March of 2018 added the override UI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_11#11.3

Oh yeah, that checks out. That was after the huge stink over silent throttling, wasn't it?

Yup! All the silent throttling drama hit the mainstream in December of 2017, and Apple reacted with discounted battery replacements starting in January of 2018 and this update a few months later.

I did the battery replacement and it didn’t help at all.

I've done several, and it did. Make sure throttling is disabled (Settings, search for Battery Health); in my experience the OS doesn't do that on its own, presumably relying on the playbook they give their support techs to cover that. It also doesn't hurt to do a "battery calibration" process like the one found at https://help.ifixit.com/article/265-battery-calibration - I don't know that I've seen a huge difference from that, but I always do it, so I wouldn't really be able to say that it's not necessary even if it isn't.