Apple did not slowly degrade the user experiebnce over time, they throttled the cpu in order to prevent the phone crashing due to a old battery, do you think that a phone that crashes sporadically is a better user experience?
As you state it is an issue of consent to this throttling, if it was communicated effectively this wouldn’t have been a ‘Gate’.
A good way described in a podcast (think it was Rene Ritchie on the talk show) would be to let the phone crash then pop up a message with an explanation of what’s happened, that the phone is now dialled down to prevent future crashes, you can turn it off in settings etc..
a) It is perfectly possible to include a battery, that, even degraded over some time, can provide enough peak power.
b) They could have sold their approach as a feature. Or they could have included a warning: Slowed down, replace battery. Similar to what they do now. But no, they kept it secret. Ask yourself why.
Also, if you have that functionality, why crash and then display a message. Write: Crash prevented, but clocked down.
Look what a Raspberry PI does: It flashes an icon if the power supply is not keeping up.
As you state it is an issue of consent to this throttling, if it was communicated effectively this wouldn’t have been a ‘Gate’.
A good way described in a podcast (think it was Rene Ritchie on the talk show) would be to let the phone crash then pop up a message with an explanation of what’s happened, that the phone is now dialled down to prevent future crashes, you can turn it off in settings etc..