On the Apple side the iPhone 4 antennagate is a better comparison since the equivalent fix there would have involved free replacements for a flagship and revenue-critical product which Apple did not offer.
Intel on the other hand did eventually offer free replacements for anybody who asked and took a major financial hit.
Anecdata ofc, but everyone I know already held phones in fingers back then, rather than hugging it as a brick.
The media coverage and the fact that "computer can't divide" is something that the public could wrap their heads around is what made the recall unavoidable.
Intel's own marketing hype around the Pentium has played into it too. It would have been a smaller deal during the 486 era.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-12-14-ls-8729-s...
> Why didn’t Intel call the Pentium the 586? Because they added 486 and 100 on the first Pentium and got 585.999983605 .”
Before anyone well actually’s me, yes they did come out with a separate CDMA iPhone 4 for Verizon where they changed the antenna design