I'm unsure about this. You may very well be right. I don't know enough to directly contradict your assessment.

Certainly, Apple is not immune from mistakes and is likely to be just as averse to wasting money as any other manufacturer.

However, I somehow feel that this may well be part of a reason but is unlikely to be the reason. Even if it is, the reason, my view is that recycling is far better than waste and that this would be an elegant solution to that alleged mistake.

An objection may be that it is detrimental to the customers but as there is no lack of transparency and the performance issue only relates to the base version, I don't think that criticism carries much, if any, weight.

Just my take. As I said, I don't know enought to comment with certainty but have been using computers since the first consumer products were produced and 16k -yes, k, was maximum RAM & 4 bit processors the go. :-)