Let's just check Apple letter written by their lawyers.

All rechargeable batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they chemically age and their ability to hold a charge diminishes. Time and the number of times a battery has been charged are not the only factors in this chemical aging process.

Fully true, obvious part.

A chemically aged battery also becomes less capable of delivering peak energy loads, especially in a low state of charge, which may result in a device unexpectedly shutting itself down in some situations.It should go without saying that we think sudden, unexpected shutdowns are unacceptable. We don’t want any of our users to lose a call, miss taking a picture or have any other part of their iPhone experience interrupted if we can avoid it.

And this is manipulation. As making call or taking picture - is not near peak consumption, usually it is very far from it.

In reality each smartphone has sensors that are able to measure battery voltage and current it can supply each moment. This is actually reason that almost all smartphones do not shut down unexpectedly despite aging batteries.

Yet none of media actually clearly underlined this. None of the media told you that somehow tablets with same aging batteries had been excluded from this "improvements" and nothing happened, no sudden switching off.

About a year ago in iOS 10.2.1, we delivered a software update that improves power management during peak workloads to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE. With the update, iOS dynamically manages the maximum performance of some system components when needed to prevent a shutdown. While these changes may go unnoticed, in some cases users may experience longer launch times for apps and other reductions in performance.

At first, independent test showed that it has nothing "dynamic" in it. Actually all it uses is the battery manufacturing date and slows down processor despite any actual battery state.

We now believe that another contributor to these user experiences is the continued chemical aging of the batteries in older iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s devices, many of which are still running on their original batteries.

And this is just blatant false.

Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.

So, at first Apple just offered a strange way - replace older batteries and hence our performance degrading code will temporary make your older phone faster again. But, please, pay us money for this. Actually this is criminal behavior. Again - none of prostitute media told you this. They all prized this, instead of telling you how inflated was battery replacement price before (as now Apple just made it as average price on the market).

Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

At the time of letter they did not wanted to give you ability to turn it off. And media again had no complains.

Why all this prostitutes were on Apple side? Well, because Apple finance them, provide them phones, invites, inside information. And if they told you truth and written proper response - it mean that Apple won't longer do it for them.

Due to lawsuits Tim was forced to tell that they will provide some way to switch slowdown off, but, of course it'll be deep inside and with big red warning to never ever do it. And, of course, Apple will do some nasty code changes to introduce sudden shutdowns in this mode :-)