This is such a great point. Deceiving others to obtain certain information could have happened anywhere. The fact that Apple is recognized on such a large scale would most certainly make a situation like this get blown way out of proportion. I doubt this would make headlines to the same degree this has if it was a smaller less-known organization. These kinds of attacks on victims like Honan happen all the time, but why do we only hear about it the most when it involves a large reputable company.
The title of this article is completely misleading. It really is astonishing how the author is primarily targeting Apple to be at fault here. While protecting customer information is a top priority for reputable companies such as Apple, you cannot equate one non-diligent AppleCare employee to the entire organization. Clearly, the AppleCare employee that was easily socially-engineered did not follow standard operating procedures. For the record, the "hackers" who destroyed Honan's digital life should be prosecuted. Its sad that Honan is letting these young punks get away with their malicious and unethical acts.
Like others, I also love Arch and have been using it since 2007. Although I started with Slackware, I find myself using Arch as my primary Linux distribution these days because I feel it is the best of Slackware, Crux, FreeBSD and maybe Gentoo to an extent. As power users, I'm sure we can all appreciate Arch for what it has become. I look forward to using Arch in the coming years.