(Though, for the record, I don’t think Apple quite took your lessons to heart: a medical device company that waited 22 days to address a known issue (an issue that might have been picked up pre-market by their engineers), then issued a release saying it was a non-problem, then held a press conference in which they minimized the issue and trashed their competitors would be defending themselves to the FDA/Congress so fast it would make your head spin.)

I think there is another interesting lesson here that’s germane to life science companies: the difference between relative and absolute risk. Jobs made a point of saying that only one additional call out of 100 was dropped by the iPhone 4, compared with the 3GS, an absolute increase of just 1 percent. But data suggests that the 3GS itself dropped one call out of every 100. So the iPhone 4, by dropping 1 additional call out of 100, is actually 100 percent worse than its predecessor. 1 percent isn’t a big deal. 100 percent is. Life science companies have long known this. Now Apple is learning it, too.