And still they released a phone with antenna issues. People complained just as they are now. Apple did something relatively rare and issued a "mea cuppa" in the form of a free case. Life went on.
My point was that controversies like these design hiccups, the shape of the case, etc. are not new to Apple.
In some ways the design issues are significantly less severe since they can be corrected without new hardware.
You keep implying Apple released a phone with legitimate antenna issues. My understanding is this has been pretty much shown to be false. Apple was responding to a media shitstorm and Jobs said the issue was "overblown." In other words, it was probably an extremely rare, if not completely non-existent, issue but was magnified due to the fact that it happened to a well known blogger.
