This is completely false.
Secondly, as you must be aware, the reason Apple decreased the performance was to extend the useful lifetime of the battery.
The fine was because they didn’t explain this properly in advance, not because they did it.
They still in fact do alter the device performance to accommodate aging batteries and make them last longer.
This is a really silly issue to raise if the argument is about Apple shortening lifetimes of devices or batteries, since it makes the device usable for longer.
To imagine it requires understanding how technology works.
Batteries are chemical processes - they degrade slowly over time. An older battery produces less power, and so can’t support the same peak performance.
You can therefore extend the useful life of the battery by throttling the CPU performance to within the power envelope provided by the battery.
It’s fairly simple to understand.
Nothing was proven by the lawsuit, since it never went to trial, you know this so it’s unclear why you’d repeat this falsehood.
As for not your suggestion that Apple not slow the devices down to extend the battery life and have users just replace the battery, that seems misguided.
Why would you want users to be forced to buy unnecessary battery replacements and further damage the environment by wasting working batteries?
It’s much better for the devices to be able to continue to use the batteries for longer, don’t you think?
Every update I get on my mac, or Iphone slows it down. Bloat and "protecting the users battery" are the root causes, and ultimately Apple is one of the best examples of a company "artificially shortening" things via design choices.