Apple is the locksmith for the phone.
Like the locksmith, Apple would and should help the feds open the phone as long as the feds have followed due process and got a search warrant. Apple could set the number of password retrys to unlimited which is what I heard that the feds asked for. I don’t think that the feds were asking Apple to put a hidden port in their general software release. That, I would be very worried about.
To do that requires writing an entirely new version of the operating system of the iPhone and then installing it on the SUBJECT DEVICE, as the court order calls it. Apple is also ordered to GIVE that new tool, the hacked OS and the means to put it on an iPhone to the FBI. That software would be a universal unlock key to every iPhone everywhere. That would destroy the invulnerability of the entire iOS ecosystem that Apple has been building for five years.
Any such ability to unlock the passcode trials compromises the security of over 800,000,000 iOS users around the world, people who have bought the system with the assurance that it is safe and secure. The US Government is demanding that Apple itself hack its own OS and then give them the hack. There is ZERO chance that hack will remain safe and not be released out into the wild where hackers and crooks will get their hands on it.
Several years ago, RIM was asked to write a hack that would get the authorities into a Blackberry phone that a child molester was suspected of having kiddie porn in. They agreed only after being assured that the hack they supplied would be destroyed after being used. The police used it, found thousands of vile pictures, and got a conviction. During the trial, in which the pictures played a prominent role, the judge ordered the defense was entitled to examine the code of the hack, so ordered it turned over to them under seal. Then AFTER the trial, the media sued to get a copy in the public interest! The idiot judge ruled the public's right to know trumped any agreement the police may have made about destroying the code, and ordered it released! But that didn't really matter anyway. That didn't matter anyway. The defense's IT expert who examined the code, kept a copy, and gave it to some friends, who gave it to other friends, and so on. So did the defense lawyers.
"Interesting game. The only winning move is not to play." Joshua, WOPR, War Games
The only way to keep it out of the hands of crooks and hackers is to never make it in the first place.