> Is it just me, or is such a phrase applicable to Apple far too many times in the past several years?

Couldn't the same statement be made about Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and other very large tech companies too?

When a company has a billion users, pretty much any huge flaw is going to have a very wide reaching impact.

Quality concerns aside, any bug in iOS instantly affects a billion people by virtue of the number of active users it has.

Comparable examples?

Just off the top of my head: I think on three separate occasions, specifically crafted text messages have made the Messages app disappear from iOS, requiring a reboot. There was a comparable MacOS login bug not too long ago.