Maybe Apple thought that, after they created these new encryption features, that they could honestly answer the government with "nope, sorry, no way to crack it, not possible". And now the government got clever and said, "but wait, you can crack it *this* way", and Apple was like, "woops".

Apple’s showdown with the Justice Department is different in one important way. Now that the government has tried to force Apple to hack its own code, security officials say, the company must view itself as the vulnerability.

“This is the first time that Apple has been included in their own threat model,” Mr. Zdziarski said. “I don’t think Apple ever considered becoming a compelled arm of the government.”