Apple telling users not to hold the phone the wrong way is different in kind and several leagues of degree from "we are enabling anyone, ever, to MitM your connection to any website."
I believe you are raising this point in good faith, but it verges on disingenuous to compare them.
Quite right - they're not on the same level. However, both are certainly 'user-hostile'.
The thrust of my argument was that most large companies are bad at communicating about technical problems because of the way the message gets filtered through management, PR, lawyers etc. It's probably fair to say that Apple hasn't ever done anything this bad - but it's also disingenuous to hold them up as an unfailing bastion of niceness and competence.
I can believe that management at Lenovo simply can't understand how serious this incident is - they're unlikely to have the technical knowledge needed to understand how severe the security problem is. I'm sure there are hundreds of Lenovo engineers tearing their hair out in frustration right now. Not that this excuses the management - they should be listening to their engineers.
[1] http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphon...