I don&#x27;t think this is a fair assessment. Apple is being asked to create a firmware version without brute force rate-limiting. With a sufficiently complex passphrase, the FBI is still SOL. They&#x27;re not being asked to create a firmware version that would decrypt the disk - which would be impossible due to the iPhone&#x27;s security architecture. The fact that only Apple is in a position to sign firmware that could do this is a positive thing in this context. The only alternatives are no firmware signing at all (so everyone could run this attack), no updates <i>at all</i>, or enforcing the rate-limiting in a HSM (which is what they&#x27;re doing on the latest generation iPhones).