I don’t know any­thing about this first-hand, but I see peo­ple com­plain about iOS5 on Twit­ter. And it occurs to me that in the quest to make their prod­uct an object of desire (an effec­tive well-executed plan, by the way) that all the cool kids sim­ply must have on release day, they have cre­ated a siz­able risk to their rep­u­ta­tion. With­out hav­ing pur­chased any Apple prod­uct, I already know not to buy ver­sion 1.0 of what­ever they ship… and if the prod­uct isn’t tech­ni­cally out­stand­ing on release day, their rep­u­ta­tion suf­fers, deservedly. What’s amaz­ing is that the desire machine con­tin­ues to trump a buggy release. How long can that con­tinue with­out weak­en­ing the brand?