I mean Apple used to say your battery is pretty bad so we’ll slow down your device, so your device didn’t exactly work fine, just like how the printer prevented you from regularly printing with it.
Not defending them, but I think they were capping high current draw performance to prevent low voltage shut off, which seemed to be an issue with aged batteries in certain, now older, models, which was perhaps a reasonable way to address the issue, but only if coupled with informing the user, which Apple failed to do. A 3 year old battery that can't maintain voltage should be replaced. Apple quietly opted to let the phone limp along.
I think two distinct issues were conflated in irate/conspiratorial users minds, that when Apple introduced new OS versions, they were optimized for the newest hardware, but seemingly not the prior gen hardware, which seemed increasingly sluggish. This was true before iOS 12, which miraculously brought back older devices to their original speed, through a years worth of extensive optimization.
I think certainly Apple benefited in new sales from upgraders of sluggish devices, but I'm not certain it was intentional. Despite their hoards of cash, Apple employs fewer engineers than almost any tech company proportional to their revenue, which requires focus, and leads to blind spots.
If it was intentional, they've changed course now, with iOS 12, and maintaining usability of older devices, even to the extent of accepting fewer upgrade sales as more users retain older devices, which is definitely now a more viable path for users of older devices, like me. (I nearly upgraded from my iPhone 6s, prior to iOS 12, but decided to keep using it.)
You were forced to do until the whole slowing down phone on upgrade scandal. As a direct result of this action, Apple discounted battery replacement until the end of 2018.