I completely agree. If Apple were transparent with the battery degradation causing throttling, this would have been almost a nonissue. I think the reason for a lot of the outcry right now beyond the people that are just irrationally hating on Apple, is the obvious connotation of greed on Apple's part. If they were transparent about the issue, less people would buy new phones if they could just fix their old phones.

This isn't an issue that's limited to Apple though. Many of Google's own Nexus devices were plagued with battery issues right on release. If you just do a search on google for Nexus throttling, a slew of threads discussing various Nexus devices with throttling or boot looping issues come up. Apple just takes the most hate because they have the biggest spotlight.

I think a lot of why Apple didn't decide to inform the public about the battery degradation issue also has to do with our culture's historical relationship with consumer technology though - especially with smartphones. Most people don't really look at their computers and smartphones as something that needs maintenance/can be fixed. Most people buy prebuilt computers/phones that work fine for a few years, and if any issue arises outside of the warranty period - they just throw the computer away and go buy a new one because why spend $1-200 at Geek Squad fixing your 5 year old machine when you can get a brand new prebuilt with the latest gen parts for $500. This mindset has followed over to phones now too, especially since smartphones were adding features so fast when they first hit the market that phones that were 2+ years old were essentially dinosaurs in terms of performance and user experience.