So far the Tame Apple Press has been playing down the scandal, claiming that users such as Zack Nelson from JerryRigEverything who managed to bend their iPad were not replicating a typical real-world scenario. Apple fanboys who must be watching their Pros bend before their eyes are even dismissing the story as a hoax. 

Now, Apple has responded to those reports in a statement to the Verge, saying that while some users may see new iPad Pros with a slight bend to them, the bend “is a side effect of the device’s manufacturing process and shouldn’t worsen over time or negatively affect the flagship iPad’s performance in any practical way”.

However, it is not as simple as that. Apple said that the small bends in a new iPad Pro’s chassis are due to part of the cooling process used to make some of the tablet’s plastic and aluminium components, with both the 11-inch and 12.9 models susceptible to small amounts of bending. The new iPads are much thinner than previous versions, and the exceptional thinness of the metal could have contributed to the devices’ susceptibility to temperature.

But surely that is what you have design teams for, so that sort of thing does not happen?

Then there is a small matter that in pictures of bent iPads, many of them exhibit some curving on or near one of the microphone holes located on the long side of the iPad Pro’s body—precisely where Zack Nelson said the tablet seemed the weakest.

Apple said it hadn’t seen an above average return rate for the new iPad Pro which means that users are not complaining about their incredible bendy tablets and probably think it is a feature.

What is also amusing is that when the new iPad Pro’s Apple and the Tame Apple Press trumpeted that the new super-thin body was hailed as a revolution and a breakthrough in modern engineering. It was another cause of "knocked up by a design student" rather than any serious thought to engineering.

Given that the bending starts the moment the iPad Pro is out of the box, it means that the long-term shelf life of an iPad Pro is probably about the same as Greek full fat yoghurt.