They didn't make the products more expensive, though. The iPhone 12 Pro series got cheaper (for the equivalent storage). They also made the charger and cable in question cheaper, for the small minority of users who actually need those items.
I believe it is profit motivated, but the real reason is the massive savings they will get on logistics by fitting almost 50% more iPhones in a shipping container by removing the charger.
If they pass some of that savings onto the consumer, it seems like it's win-win.
Besides the better shipping efficiency it's also worth considering the real estate. Retailers, including Apple's own stores, have finite storage space for products. The new iPhones come in multiple colors for each model. Shrinking the packaging dimensions means a wider selection can be kept in stock in the same space as a narrower selection of the previous model.
Regardless, at the scale of Apple selling iPhones a small decrease in weight and/or better packing efficiency can mean huge CO2 savings. A gallon of diesel producers about 20 pounds of CO2. Doubling the iPhone/mile because of smaller packages halves the CO2/iPhone production.
When positing causes, I suggest you learn how to do back-of-the-envelope calculations in your head. A container can hold a lot of iPhones. The cost of transport is trivial in comparison to the value, so the profitability delta is very small. I.e. I think you are making up stuff.
There's in fact a whole chain of facilities that handle supplies to retail outlets. Every gallon of diesel fuel burned to get things from those shipping terminals to a retailer emits about 20 pounds of CO2. Increasing the number of things per vehicle reduces each thing's CO2 contribution. It also decreases the shipping cost of each thing as it goes through that chain of supply.
The shipping for each iPhone might be a small portion of its retail price but it needs to be paid up front and in aggregate. So millions of dollars in shipping costs getting even a 30% savings is still millions of dollars in savings.
Besides the retail cost of goods is unrelated to the BOM and transaction costs. It's what the market will bear. Savings in BOM costs or transport just go into the retailer or manufacturer's pocket as profit.
And it's not just logistics - it's storage space in warehouses, and probably a number of other things which are made substantially more efficient by fitting the same amount of units in a lot less space.
Sure, add all the logistics costs in your head using some heuristic (security is a big component you are missing). Now compare that number to the profit of selling an extra charger, or the BOM price of a charger.
HN is a community of thinkers and you will be judged by your responses to criticism. Learn from your mistakes, or back up your opinions with some numbers and calculations so we can learn from you.
Edit: I’ll append the approximations at the base of my heuristic:
* I only care about marginal $deltas when comparing
* an extra shipping container costs $10000
* one cubic metre holds 1000 one litre boxes
* a charger costs Apple $5
* total marginal $delta shipping costs are less than 10 times the delta in shipping costs
* Apple use 20 foot containers
Although on second thought, they must use planes otherwise inventory in transit would be astronomical, but I still believe that marginal savings from not producing a charger dominates (by over 10x) the savings from smaller packaging.
I.e. adding power brick would increase shipping weight and cost by 25%.