A few weeks ago I penned a piece discussing a brief history of Apple and some potential road blocks that threatened to knock the company off its current high horse. Well, it looks like those road blocks may have come sooner rather than later.

Recently the media has given much attention to the antenna reception problem that has plagued the iPhone 4. At first this didn’t seem like a very big deal, but it’s beginning to look like the issue could be blown up into a huge Toyota-like PR nightmare.

Now to specify, there are two separate issues with the iPhone reception, one is software-based and the other is hardware-based. The software problem is something that has been around for the past two years. Apparently the phone can display completely inaccurate reception signal, such as showing four bars of service when the quality of signal is really only equivalent to one bar. This is something Apple is supposed to fix with an update in the near future.

The hardware problem is something specific to the iPhone 4, and has to do not with the display of reception signal, but with the actual receiving of the signal. This is the problem that has got the most attention since the phone’s debut.

It seems Steve Jobs’ first mistake has been to take a page from Akio Toyoda’s public relations manual and to not give the situation enough credibility from the start. After the discovery of the antenna problem, Jobs issued a statement saying to simply ‘hold the phone differently’ or to ‘buy a case’ in order to fix the problem. The last thing customers want to be told after they spent $600 for a brand new phone that turns out not to be top quality is to ‘hold it differently’ or to ‘buy a case.’

This statement comes off as arrogant and pompous, and seems to be what turned a number of tech reviewers, bloggers, and other members of the media against the iPhone 4.

Consumer Reports, one of the most respected reviewers of consumer products in the United States, recently conducted their own tests on the iPhone 4 to discern how much of the problem was the phone’s fault versus how much was the signal carrier’s fault. After concluding the problem was decisively with Apple’s hardware, they issued a warning to not buy the iPhone 4. This may not seem like a big deal to a younger demographic of consumers, but Consumer Reports holds considerable sway with how products are viewed and could have a top-down affect from an older, more seasoned demographic of consumer.

Suddenly things continue to look more and more Toyota-like, and now people are beginning to throw the word “recall” out.

Is this necessary? It certainly seems like it would be an effective way of quelling all this negative PR before it becomes a full-blown nightmare, but it could come with some backlash. For one, Apple would have to *gasp* admit that there is a defect in the phone, and this could possibly tarnish their reputation ever so slightly. Business analysts have figured a recall could have monetary costs of $1.5 billion. While this is small compared to its nearly $40 billion in cash and securities, it would certainly eat into its quarterly earnings, and the damage done to its image and consumer base could be far worse.

Another option would be to offer free cases to its customers who bought the iPhone 4, which would only cost an estimated $1 each. But this fix might not go far enough, and could make it seem like Apple took the easy way out.

Regardless of how Apple handles this, it’s already another addition to a growing streak of negative publicity that was almost non-existent a few years ago. I’m not assuming that people will stop buying iPhones tomorrow, but the beginning of the tarnishing of a brand and consumer base just opens the door even wider for competitors. I haven’t seen Android badmouthed in the press lately.

I guess we’ll just sit back and see if the media frenzy over this Apple issue gets as blown up as the Toyota recall.