What Apple possesses is the somewhat unique ability to design a system that is actually secure by burning the key into the secure enclave and not allowing it to be updated. The only way someone would be able to get to it then is by attacking the physical hardware itself (which I'm sure an NSA-level attacker could do), but it would render this entire thing moot, as even Apple wouldn't be able to unlock the phone if it wanted.

I say unique because they can bake security into the actual hardware design, and tightly control how the entire thing works, which android & windows simply can't do. In order to trust your OS (and in turn, your signed software), you have to trust your hardware first. The security of the entire system falls apart if you can't trust your hardware.

I agree. I will go further and say that I hope Apple would make the same decision in secret. I believe Apple in general and Tim Cook in particular to be not just moral, but "principled", in that I feel like he's unlikely to back down from a moral argument without being beaten into submission. I hope Apple fights this one to the death.

> Thing is, this entire system is based off of trust. If people lose trust in Apple, then they lose trust product. While even Apple can't decrypt the data, existence of malicious signed code means you can't trust signed code.

The question at hand is whether it makes sense to trust a company when their government wants them to do something and may technically have the law (as broken as you or I or even "almost everyone" feels that law is) on their side. This is the same discussion about putting data on servers in other countries run by companies that might bow to the will of some oppressive totalitarian regime, only the server is in your pocket and the regime is the United States through the FBI.