I know I am walking upon a mined field here, but I think that, despite his hero status, a certain kind of insecurity is showing these days from him. I mean, if you are sure you have a good product would you argue to death with a journalist or will you answer him then let the public try and judge the product on his own when it comes out?
I mean, I don't think that if someone would have badly criticized the iPhone someone at Apple would have been deeply concerned, because they were certain that thousands of authors and thousands of users would have praised it soon thereafter, and a few bad opinions wouldn't have harmed it much.