Maybe, but probably not. They were pretty clear that the battery throttling on phones with old batteries was to prevent the phone from shutting down under high

Maybe, but probably not. They were pretty clear that the battery throttling on phones with old batteries was to prevent the phone from shutting down under high load. I'd argue that 95% (maybe higher?) of the public and the press don't understand this and still believe Apple was throttling the phone speed to force them to buy a new device. You even see this on HN a lot where people should know better. Bringing attention to it may just have caused the bad media response earlier.