Is the honeymoon finally over for Apple?

Hey, it's been a good, long run. The stock is way up. The customers love the company. Every product (well, almost) is a smash hit. Apple has long been able to do no wrong.

But the times they are a changin'. Apple is now finding itself beseiged, on a nearly daily basis, with bad press and one case of customer outrage after another. In the last few days, the initially-loved iPhone 3G has been the subject of numerous complaints (and now lawsuits) about its service quality and had a huge security flaw revealed that lets anyone who picks up an iPhone bypass the password prompt. MobileMe is now a full-on disaster. You've got the Psystar countersuit. And in Britain, the company had a TV commercial banned for being misleading (since you can't run Flash or Java on an iPhone).

Most recently, Apple even faced a small customer backlash when it banned an independent comic strip from the iPhone App store because it felt the animations were too violent. (You are welcome, however, to buy a copy of the ultra-gory Saw or Saw II from the iTunes Store.) Even mega-fan Michael Arrington has called the company to the carpet for what he has deemed an "unacceptable" rate of failure of a variety of Apple products.

Why, even the news media can't be pleased any more: In an obvious "accident," Bloomberg reported that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had died.

What's going on here? Growing pains, for starters. As any company grows, its attention to detail and its level of customer service almost always falters to some degree. It can't help that Apple is so distracted: The company has suddenly gotten its hands in so many industries and so many countries with its iPhone 3G launch that it's clearly struggling to keep up with the intricacies of a worldwide telco presence. But maybe there's more to it: Customers really seem to be tiring of Apple's strongarm, radio-silence tactics, and what was once seen as a maverick alternative to the establishment is rapidly becoming a mainstream monster itself. The same guys who used to chime in with "buy a Mac" in message boards are now the ones who say "buy Linux." (Don't let me down, fellas!)

Other theories are welcome, of course. In light of all the chaos and wringing of hands, I find it difficult to explain Apple's glowing report in the latest version of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which gave Apple its greatest gain ever in overall satisfaction and puts it 10 points ahead of its nearest rival in the computer industry. Is it a love-hate relationship or what? One explanation: People just really hate Windows Vista that much.