LG and Samsung have the issue. It's prominent on Apple products precisely because people can't seem to shut up about Apple on both extremes, but it affects everyone who buys those products (some more than others depending on grade allotments). Apple's defect rate is low relative to most competitors, but its media profile is astronomically higher.
Why? Because you're more special than other consumers? Everyone has an equal chance of having to deal with it. Saying "no one should ever have any problems with anything that costs money" is completely detached from reality.
There isn't a magical dollar amount. QC improvements closely approximate a logarithmic scale. For any given product, you're looking at a ~10% price increase to achieve a 1% decrease in defect rates. The diminishing returns and prohibitive cost are why it's not done--95-99% is usually considered acceptable. At that point it becomes much easier and cheaper to replace the few that get through than to catch them beforehand. Inconveniencing 1% of customers with an extra trip to the store is clearly the lesser evil compared to charging 100% of customers a substantially higher price to avoid that.
Like everything else, there are some lemons. Like any new display product, there are more than with mature products. That's life. Where's the screwup? If even as many as a tenth of customers were affected, I might agree, but that's clearly not the case.
Would you prefer a worse display for a marginal decrease in production difficulties? Should Google not have used the AMOLED display in the Nexus One because of its manufacturing difficulties?
It's not a software issue. EDIT: I see you've updated your post. It's likely not "fixable" either, except by exchange, though many backlight problems resolve after a few days of breakin. This is why professional display calibration is done a few weeks into use.
Perhaps if you paid a little extra right?
