I feel like more transparency would have been welcomed, but aside from that this is a "no win" situation, since you have to pick a winner: - Do you degrade performance but leave screen-on time relatively unchanged? - Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged? Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep performance relatively unchanged). Different people w…
I think out of the two options, Apple picked the far more deceptive one, or at least the one that will be perceived to be deceptive (which IMO is the same thing). Few people would be surprised that batteries degrade over time, eventually causing noticeable drops in battery life, many people seem surprised that performance is intentionally and artificially reduced over time.
A better option is a larger battery, but without that, I think they make more customers happy than I'd they did the alternative.