This is all just theatre. The real motivation is to control the platform: to ship a piece of hardware that dictates who can install stuff on it, instead of the traditional hardware that lets you completely overwrite everything in it if you have physical access.<p>Since 197X, people had home computers (and institutional computers for two decades before that) on which the FBI could install anything they want, if that equipment fell into their hands.  This fact never made news headlines; it was taken for granted that the computer is basically the digital equivalent of a piece of stationery, written in pencil.<p>There is nothing wrong with that situation, and on such equipment, you can secure your <i>data</i> just fine.<p>No machine can be trusted if it fell under someone&#x27;s physical access. Here is a proof: if I get my hands on your device, I can <i>replace</i> it with a physically identical device which looks exactly like yours, but is actually a man-in-the-middle (MITM). (I can put the fake device&#x27;s board into your original plastic and glass, so it will have the same scratches, wear, grime pattern and whatever other markings that distinguish the device as yours.) My fake device will collect the credentials which you enter. Those are immediately sent to me and I play them against the real device to get in.<p>Apple are trying to portray themselves as a champion of security, making clueless users believe that the security of a device rests in the manufacturer&#x27;s hands. This could all be in <i>collaboration</i> with the FBI, for all we know.  Two versions of Big Brother are playing the &quot;good guy&#x2F;bad guy&quot; routine, so you would trust the good guy, who is basically just one of the faces of the same thing.