Was Apple's Press Conference Successful?

On Friday Apple held a press conference to address the problem users have had dropping calls when using the new iPhone 4.  As I mentioned in this post a few hours before the press conference Apple's best course of action was to accept responsibility, fix the design flaw, and apologize for letting their customers down. 

That's not quite what happened.

Steve Jobs did acknowledge that there was a break in the antenna's reception, but tried to convince users that other smartphones have worse reception and more dropped calls.  He also said that "antennagate" is not as bad as the media has made it out to be, and that a fairly small percentage of users have called to report any problems.  (I wonder how many users tried to alert Apple only to have the call dropped...)

To Apple's credit they made a generous offer to give away free cases that seem to resolve all reception issues, but I think they diluted the positive gesture by trying to downplay their problems.  It doesn't matter if other smartphones have similar issues: Apple users expect their iPhones to be of a higher quality, and those expectations have now been lowered.

Does anyone think the press conference went well for Apple?  Did they save face?  Will the free cases make users forgive and forget?