[exw]

<<Yes I do think that they would attempt to discourage unauthorized repairs in such a way for less-than-noble reasons.>>

I have added some additional information to the parent comment (i.e., only bricked updates via iTunes, not OTA) that further undermine the theory that this was a deliberate change. I realize that you could still argue that the actual bug was that the OTA update did not brick the phones, but Occam's razor really starts applying...

<<If you think it was a mistake, then can you explain why Apple wasn't bothered to do anything until someone ran an article on it and publicized it?>>

I do agree with you that Apple has a long record of dragging their feet to issue fixes for pretty significant bugs, so it is possible that the press caused them the issue the patch faster.