I'm sure Apple could figure out a way to allow repairing this problem while still hardening the Secure Enclave against this attack. They just haven't, because it seems that their threat model didn't previously include themselves an a potential attacker. I'm sure that's changing now.
Submitting passcodes electronically doesn't really make that much of a difference. It takes at least 80ms to try a passcode that way. Require touchscreen input and you've bumped that up to, what, a second or two? Without the escalating delays and potential wipe, a (very bored) person could crack a four-digit passcode by hand in a day.
Also, did they remove this functionality? The "IP Box" brute forcer submits passcodes over USB. Apple may have removed that when they patched the vulnerability that allowed bypassing the escalating delays, of course, but it did exist.
I don't know why the FBI requested this ability, but it's presumably just something like, while we're here we might as well make things a little easier.
Submitting passcodes electronically doesn't really make that much of a difference. It takes at least 80ms to try a passcode that way. Require touchscreen input and you've bumped that up to, what, a second or two? Without the escalating delays and potential wipe, a (very bored) person could crack a four-digit passcode by hand in a day.
Also, did they remove this functionality? The "IP Box" brute forcer submits passcodes over USB. Apple may have removed that when they patched the vulnerability that allowed bypassing the escalating delays, of course, but it did exist.
I don't know why the FBI requested this ability, but it's presumably just something like, while we're here we might as well make things a little easier.