The news about the infected iPods was the second such story in recent days. On Monday, McDonald's admitted that 10,000 MP3 players that were given away in a promotion in Japan also contained a worm, identified as WORM-QQPASS.ADH.

Both Poon and Abrams said that Apple's response to the infected iPods fell short of McDonald's, even though the burger giant has precious little experience in the consumer electronics space.

"The difference in how McDonald's and Apple handled similar incidents paints a stark difference between management integrity and customer service focus," Abrams wrote.

"Both cases were flawed manufacturing processes. Mistakes can happen and smart companies accept responsibility, make things right with the customer, and fix the problems. Lesser companies play the blame game," he wrote.

McDonald's fix: a single link to Trend Micro's "Housecall" online virus scanning service and an open offer to replace infected players for free also won praise over Apple's response: a bunch of links to free antivirus software trials, including Microsoft's OneCare program, Poon wrote.