That's part of it, sure. But it's not a justification. By definition, blowing something out of proportion is to exceed to the justifiably proportionate response.

Like I said, there are a variety of easy fixes. They range from being as cheap as a strip of electrical tape, to $30 for a bumper. If that's such a huge deal for you that it outweighs the merits of the phone, then return it, wait for a fix, or use another phone. I can think of hundreds of other things that deserve far more attention.

As for Apple's crappy response, by all means, call them out on it. This deserves a decent amount of attention, since it seems like a bad case of corporate denial. But at the end of the day, whether they cop to it or not isn't really going to change anyone's life.

I agree this isn't going to change anyone's life but I also suspect Apple would have continued to ignore the issues if this hadn't been 'blown way out of proportion'. They have already demonstrated twice the direct desire to play this down and make it go away. While the response has been disproportionate to the severity of the issue, I feel it also is the only reason Apple is being forced to address it fully now. They really really really don't ever like to admit they made a mistake. Perhaps this is what was required to make them 'man up' and perhaps eat a little corporate humble pie.

If the new Mercedes S class had a flaw that could be fixed with something as simple as a strip of duct tape up to a $400 widget (paid for out of pocket by the customer), would that be acceptable?

Because that's how Apple positions themselves in the market.

Disregarding cost, that probably depends on if the tape/widget goes under the hood somewhere or prominently in the middle of the windshield.