Step back and think about the proposition, NOT through the "Apple is always right" lens but through a consumer lens:
- A fellow consumer's iPhone (or maybe yours) feels slower
- Seemingly objective test strongly implies throttling in iOS code
- Apple admits throttling code but associates it solely with an aging battery
- Apple offers a new battery for $29 whether the existing battery needs replaced or not
- Consumer sees $29 buying them a much faster iPhone and/or adding some useful life to their existing iPhone
Consumers are doing nothing wrong. Apple has basically invited them to take this action to apparently remedy a problem Apple introduced with throttling code (and no consumer option to turn it off). Consumer has to PAY money to buy this upgrade. Pretending there is something wrong with consumers doing what Apple offered is ridiculous.
This business of "whether they need it or not" is not a consumer bashing catalyst either. Did you get AppleCare not knowing if you would need it or not? A flu shot? Insurance on your car, home, possessions, life, health, etc? We buy things all the time whether we need them or not. If the price is right and there is a tangible benefit (as is the case here), why not?
Before someone comes back about putting those who really need a battery replacement at the front of the lines, think through how to make that actually work in a retail-friendly approach. Try boarding a plane in a perfect order from back row to front, window, then middle, then aisle seats, for a perfectly orderly boarding process. No airline has been able to pull that off yet and that's only a few hundred people at most. How do you schedule most need to least need battery replacements on upwards of tens of millions of iPhones? "No sir, based on your battery's condition vs. all others, you are #11,646,788 in the que."
I know for some of us when the parties involved are Apple vs __________, the latter must be wrong. In this case, it's Apple vs. Apple consumers. Of course, those pesky consumers have to be wrong in this... in spite of Apple's own admission, a third party test driving the admission and all of us knowing first hand that aging iDevices do seem to slow down with each new iOS upgrade.
Personally, I hope all the throttling code is solely associated with an aging battery. Spend $29 and get back to near full speed sounds like a terrific consumer benefit to me... much like we used to spend about $49 to buy a new version of OS X.