Over the last several years, Apple has repeatedly made deposits in its trust bank with consumers, mostly by delivering interesting, well-designed products that people like to use. In the last day, they have made a huge withdrawal from that trust bank, and the impact on their brand will be interesting to watch. Saul Hansell has a good write up. In some ways what Apple is seeing in terms of backlash, and there is backlash -- people are pretty grumpy at what the rightly see as arrogance from Apple -- is the result of the company not fully absorbing they are no longer a niche player. If you are a niche player you can get away with playing crazy competitive games like Apple did with Real a while back, changing code to break Real's ability to work on the iPod. When you move to the mainstream and have people start depending on you (hello, big difference between suddenly having an iPod that can't play stuff from Real and having a PHONE that is now a brick), the rules change. Companies who don't really absorb this change in stature and continue to behave as insurgents as opposed to category leaders often make decisions that hurt their brand -- we are watching Apple do just this.
By the way, I think this is strike three for apple. Others would say strike two, but the first strike (having to send back the iPhone to get the battery replaced) has not yet fully been driven home to people. Strike two was the iPhone price change, and the bricking of the phone is the final strike.