Bendgate is the latest in a long line of minor Apple problems that get blown out of proportion by the Internet’s echo chamber and the media jackals that inevitably swoop in and howl about the latest “crisis.”

The same sort of over-the-top backlash happened with the iPhone 4’s reception issue (Antennagate) and the iPad’s trickle-charge feature (Batterygate). It’s a familiar cycle: Apple’s fantastic new device captures the world’s attention, a glitch arises and suddenly the world is coming to an end — at least until it’s not.

“Apple’s ability to trigger consumer demand is probably without rival across the globe — that’s no small feat,” says Larry Barton, a pioneer in corporate crisis management who studies the causes of and responses to incidents like these. “Their core, loyal customer has proven to be forgiving across several minor incidents, and Bendgate is just that — a relatively minor snafu that’s not uncommon with a first-generation design.”

This week on The CultCast: Bendgate! Some say it’s Antennagate 2.0, but is there a legitimate issue happening here? We’ll tell you what we think about these “bent” iPhones… Then, we’ve used it for a whole week—catch our updated impressions of iPhone 6. Plus, why you should hold off on installing iOS 8.0.1, and what you can do if you already have. And finally, it’s not just the big screen, there might be another reason the iPhone 6 has been impossible to buy. We’ll tell you our stories from launch day…

Heartily guffaw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.

Click on for the show notes.

If you got a $15 in the mail for no apparent reason, well, it’s because way back in 2010, Steve Jobs failed in convincing the world at large to “just avoid holding it that way.”

Yes, that cool $15 bucks you got in the mail? It’s an Antennagate settlement check.

Apple doesn’t have a rich history of apologizing for their errors, big or small. When AntennaGate shook the web, Apple held a conference but they never said they were sorry. They just told us that antennas suck sometimes but they’ll give us a free bumper to be quiet. In fact, I can’t remember many times at all where Apple came out and publicly admitted a mistake.

Tim Cook’s apology this morning was a great gesture. It was almost a first for the company. Admitting that Apple’s not perfect and made a mistake isn’t easy, but did Tim Cook need to apologize to satisfy Apple customers? Could they have done something else to resolve the situation? We’d love to hear your ideas, so come over to the forums and talk to us about it.

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac Forums and talk about Tim Cook’s apology

Remember Jonathan Mann? He became popular on YouTube for writing and uploading a brand new song each and every day, and he’s famous among Apple fans for writing a song about the iPhone 4’s Antennagate, which was played at a special press event held by Apple to discuss the issue. He also did a duet with Siri, which we covered back in October.

Mann’s now back with Apple’s digital assistant for a special happy birthday song.

Speaking at a company event in Sydney, Australia, this week, Apple co-founder and everyone’s favorite geek Steve Wozniak spoke out about Apple’s new Maps service, which got its public debut alongside iOS 6 last Wednesday. Like most of us, Woz says he’s disappointed with the new app, and that Google’s Maps service is better. However, he doesn’t feel that the issues users have been experiencing are “that severe.”

Apple has settled a class action lawsuit over the ‘antennagate’ debacle that surfaced shortly after the launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010. Around 25 million customers in the U.S. will be entitled to $15 in cash or a free bumper case.

It seems early iPhone 4S adopters the world over have discovered a new issue with Apple’s latest handset. No, it has nothing to do with poor battery life, but rather a complete loss of signal for no apparent reason. To be clear, this isn’t a new “antennagate” — the issue does not occur while holding the device in a certain position — it’s a new problem that causes the device to lose its signal randomly. Users report they can be enjoying a full five-bar signal one minute, then be greeted by that frustrating “No Service” status the next.

Apple issued its first iOS 5 update to the public yesterday — an update which was released to fix “bugs affecting battery life” under the latest firmware, amongst other issues. Following the update, however, users have reported that their battery life has seen no improvement, and that iOS 5.0.1 comes with more bugs of its own.

The placement of the cellular and WiFi antennas between the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 couldn’t be more different, but that’s not stopping a small but vocal minority of iPad 2 owners to cry about an Antennagate of their own.