Apple actually lost a lawsuit over this, but of course it didn't matter because the capitalist government theatre is controlled by the ruling class protecting their own, so Apple still came out on top.
IIRC due to the degrading/faulty(?) batteries they had to choose between random shutdowns and slowing down the phone. I'm not sure I agree with the way they handled this but I don't think they did that because of "corporate greed".
I wouldn't be so generous. Slowing down the phone without any notification is a major problem. Had they added a notification this was happening, there would be no problems at all.
Of course, adding such a notification would've prompted many users to seek out battery replacements (and a lot of non-Apple-authorized repair shops would've been happy to meet this demand) and give a new life to their devices, where as silently slowing down their device would prompt those users to eventually upgrade once they get tired of it.
Yeah, they didn't tell Apple Geniuses either IIRC so when users came into the store complaining about a slow phone they weren't recommending a $99 battery replacement but a $699 iPhone 7.
i remember my initial ipad2. Yeah new ipads came out, updated, and the old one became too slow to use after the updates. I hated apple products for a long time after that. that was 2013