At this point, I'm not as sure as others on this thread that the Government "blinked" and lost.
I think it's entirely possible that the Israeli firm managed to "crack" the phone and give the Feds the data it wanted from the phone.
That would negate the primary reason for the judge's order which all along was the Government stating they "owed it to the families" to tell them whether or not they'd caught everyone responsible for killing their loved ones. Then there's the fact that the Federal Government really didn't like having an encryption scheme that they couldn't break.
Then there's always the possibility that the third-party Israeli firm managed to create a tool to reset the password counter in iOS which would then enable the Federal Government to unlock ANY phone at ANY time.
That would also in effect give the Federal Government what it wanted and negate the reason for the lawsuit.
So this could all be a ruse at this point designed to distract the public into thinking "Apple won" when in fact it may not have.
Yes, I'm that skeptical.
“So this could all be a ruse at this point designed to distract the public into thinking “Apple won” when in fact it may not have.”
Apple did win! And not only did it win on the legal merits, but it’s going to win in the marketplace now that everyone who has an A6 processor equipped iPhone will upgrade to the newer iPhones with the A7 chip and the better incryption scheme. Furthermore, Apple will know whether or not their phone was backdoored, and will go to work on further strengthening of their encryption protocols. We would not be here today if our Immigration Laws had been faithfuilly executed and this woman terrorist kept from entering our country. Trump is right, no Muslims into our country for the forseeable future. NONE of them are coming here for anything but to wage jihad on us all. Europe had better get off it’s ass and start wholesale deportations of their muslim population before there’s noting left of their countries! If we had a government that looked after us, we’d be doing the same thing. Take a look at Dearborn, Michigan (HQ of the Ford Motor Company) now a Muslim/Sharia-run city. Do you want to live under those conditions?