Admitting that they fucked up will cut into their profits. Convincing people that the phone is fine and that the user is the problem moves more units.
Apple has investors like any other company. This move is good for the investors.
Any move that is bad for the customers won't be good for investors.
There is no short term vs long term thinking once you reached profitability and have cash reserves. The short term will inevitably become the long term.
The _responsible_ thing to do for your investors is to solve problems before they get any more expensive to solve. i.e. solve your problems _now_
You have to simultaneously satisfy customers, investors, employees and the community you operate within. If you cannot wrap your head around that you cannot be trusted by anyone because you will always be sacrificing one for the other to save your incompetent ass.
Sheesh. This is not rocket science.
Feel free to shout once you've had enough and want the beatings to stop.
:-)
This is shit that should have been corrected in the DESIGN stage.
most likely, the reason being that they field-tested this whole thing with 3gs look-alike dielectric (non-conducting) case...
Admittedly that's a flippant remark but I still haven't seen any indication as to what proportion of users are having the problem. It's getting press because it's Apple, not necessarily because huge proportions of users are having issues. I expect someone here will correct me if I'm wrong though.