Unless one of their real goals was to get the conversation going about creating new laws that would make uncrackable products illegal, without actually testing the limits of existing laws. Because that is what they achieved.

> This particular phone is immaterial, and Apple can always talk big later about how they patched any of the security holes that the government used, to recover face.

That is a nuanced understanding of this issue that most consumers simply do not and will not have. Most will hear nothing other than "the feds can now crack iPhones" and will assume that government will be able to beat any future improvements too.

I suppose, but the conversation definitely wasn't moving in their direction. More like they beat a hasty retreat.

> Most will hear nothing other than "the feds can now crack iPhones"

I assume that most people already believe that they can crack iPhones. And it's not like they came out of this process looking good; they created a huge media circus about how they needed Apple to unlock the phone, beating their chests, only to come back with "uh... well, I guess we didn't need to do any of this at all".

There seems to be much more to this beyond the actual capabilty and it doesn't seem the spin 'apple fighting for our rights' which mainstream media loves is the most likely, so I wpuldn't say FBI hasn't accomplished its goal - especially if it was to cast doubt on Apple security, as they're now basically advertised they can do it no matter what. Unless FBI agreed to previous apple request and they did it togheter under cover.