Rule 1 of crisis management..
..is to avoid patently false statements. Epic fail, thus..
"One thing I’ve learned is that when there's a successful organization, people want to tear it down," Jobs said.
Well, one thing I learned when analysing crisis is that the BS thickens in a direct relation to the depth of the problem. Not that I needed it, but Jobs has just 100% confirmed that there IS an issue, and that they are far removed from sorted it.
That is the problem with hype based sales: if you screw up, you screw up in large volumes. The amount of BS here indicates that Apple is absolutely desperate to avoid a recall, but I cannot see it solved any other way. Oh, and as for "few people calling in with a problem", well, yes, that IS kinda hard f the phone doesn't work, duh.
I've seen some people say that the problem is present in all phones, that's BS too. I avoided the Motorola brick by buying a more slick and discrete NEC P3, but I have been using mobile phones pretty much since they no longer needed a carrying handle, and I have in those years never seen a similar pronounced problem. The 3GS has it to some degree, but you have to hold it in a weird way to kill reception, only the 4 takes no effort whatsoever. It is a problem specific to the iPhone 4, and the iPhone 4 only - any other statement is simply not consistent with the facts.
As someone with a mechanics, electronics and computing background I'm impressed with what Apple has done with hardware over the last few years, it makes the disappointment with the way they handle this evident cock-up even greater.. It makes you wonder what else they haven't told you about..