You know, I wasn't really trying to compare it to anything. The tone of this thread started out with a "the iPod Touch is here, the sky is falling" sort of attitude. I guess I was really trying to point out that Apple is human and not some demi-god whose products are going to be these perfect world beaters or always necessarily well received. I think that the posts and stories in those links also illustrate that if you're going to hype the hell out of a proposed flagship product you'd better watch your keister because all the high profile media outlets are going to put it under a microscope as soon as possible, and if you stumble with your quality control as Apple obviously did, it's going to get blown up and look ten times worse than if someone like Nokia, Motorola, Sandisk or Creative did it. I use Apple products and Mac OS X as my primary OS on a daily basis, but I still realize that they are a corporation just like any other (nonetheless one with a genius marketing machine) and not some warm, fuzzy, benevolent entity.

I'd also dispute that it's more than just a few dozen screens. It's just too big a coincidence that several noteworthy reviewers across the country would all just happen to get units with poor screens.

It's happened before with faulty iBooks and such. They'll quietly fix the problem and then acknowledge it once the improved units start shipping. They kind of do it in a left handed fashion, but they usually are good about eventually admitting their shortcomings. Fortunately it typically doesn't take them several months and I'd wager that quite a few Apple employees didn't get much sleep this weekend and they'd already triaged this issue at the factories before the sun rose Monday morning. Mr. Jobs isn't very tolerant of problems that cast Apple in a negative light.