The residual good feelings and general can-do-no-wrong vibe left at Apple by Steve Jobs are surely about to run out.
The launch of the iPhone 6 may well have seen it sell more phones in a weekend than Apple has managed before, but days later it pushed out a broken software update and was then laughed at by hipsters who supposedly managed to bend the chassis of the iPhone 6 Plus while shoving them in the pocket of their too-tight wine-red cords.
It's not like Apple can use the excuses of the Android consortium for the iOS update problems. There's only one type of iPhone released each year. The software only has to be tested on a handful of models, unlike each Android release which has to run on more individual hardware formats and resolution combinations than there are types of snowflake.
Releasing an update that appeared to break the mobile reception of its phones and the critical Touch ID security feature is a ludicrous mistake. How can a company with the immense resources of Apple botch a launch-week OS update when the eyes of the world are watching?
It's a Microsoft level of incompetence and ought to get people starting to question exactly what it is they're queuing for each September.
Goodwill gone?
Mind you, we may have said the same thing back in 2010, when "antennaegate" and the "holding it wrong" advice crisis looked to have crushed Apple's hard-earned goodwill shortly after the iPhone 4 release.
Are people going to like Apple forever, regardless of its screw ups? If iPhone 7 has a battery life of 35 minutes will fans still queue for iPhone 7S 12 months later, blindly assuming magical Apple will have fixed everything this time?
If it turns out the iPhone 8 is manufactured out of papier mache with a chocolate processor heat sink when the post-release teardowns are written, will people care? Or will they adapt and put up with it, buying ever more elaborate protective cases for their papier mache mobiles, just like owners of current-gen iPhones have adapted to their crappy battery life?
One day Apple's mask of untouchability will slip. And we'll be there with a plasticky Samsung the size of a road atlas to capture it happening.
Hitting it with a hammer wrong
Then there's BendGate. Or #bendgate if you've got social media accounts in the right places. Apple was actually forced to make a public statement on the fact that some idiots managed to break their mobile phones within a week of buying them, with the tech giant saying that "nine customers" had so far complained they'd managed to bend their telephones.
Nine people out of ten million sales isn't a bad failure rate, it's just a bit of a shame for Apple that one of those nine people happens to be in charge of a YouTube account now sitting on a video of an iPhone 6 apparently bending with over 26 million views.
And even if bendgate is just idiots putting their phones in their pockets before a kick boxing session and complaining about the results, it's damaging for Apple. People are starting to mock it and question its worthiness of dominance. It's in danger of becoming a laughing stock.
