I think that he’s expressing his dismay over how the press, in the complete absence of any actual hard evidence, blew this issue completely out of proportion

I think that he’s expressing his dismay over how the press, in the complete absence of any actual hard evidence, blew this issue completely out of proportion In a crisis situation you have to play defense. The burden was on Apple to provide the hard evidence. When they determined it was going to take some time to gather this information they should have communicated a time table. That being said it's totally surreal that we live in a world where the iPhone has become so important that it gets a level of mainstream media coverage usually reserved for death & destruction so it's probably understandable that Apple wasn't prepared.