All I can tell you about is my own experiences, I don’t live other people’s lives for them. I’d much prefer the iphone had made it to the two year point at least, I’ve got much better things to be doing with $400.
Do your own experiences include going to the Genius Bar, or did you rule it out based on something you'd heard? Because your description of Apple's "normal mode" is anything but.
I checked about a dozen Apple stores online, and they all had at least thirty appointments available for tomorrow. All but one had morning appointments. Most if not all stores also do stand-by appointments, and if there are any that don't as a matter of policy, they probably will if you ask nicely -- the wait is unpredictable, depending on when someone cancels or no-shows, but it's same-day.
You said the phone was less than a year old, which means it was still covered by warranty, unless it was damaged by water or some other misadventure. Even in cases of water damage, the replacement is $199 at most. The extra $400 you spent was as the result of your own actions, not anything Apple did (or didn't do).
So far, all of your experiences are totally off the wall and counter to all of ours. Your recall of history is also completely different from the history of reality. Atari did NOT stop the sale of the Atari 520ST... and in fact was never threatened by Apple with shut down. Apple merely required Digital Research to change the look and feel of GEM... to avoid copying the copyrighted Mac, which it did in it's first incarnation. You can SEE the obvious copy infringements in the post above. The changes were minor... not the MAJOR crippling you claim was required. You post inaccuracies and myths and complain when we call you on them.