Precisely. They removed the 3.5mm jack to sell AirPods, and they ended up selling a ton. They want you to buy into their whole ecosystem, and something like a cable is a foot in the door (more eyeballs on their website or in their stores when you inevitably need a new one).
Their PR makes less sense than the cynical reasoning, so I believe the cynical reasoning.
Same way that the reason they removed the 3.5mm jack was "space" or "courage".
That was shown to be demonstrably not true, as thinner devices kept being released with the port.