Yep. iOS 8 was a big change in how aspects of encryption were handled on the phone. It closed off a number of tech support and other "back doors" of sorts that were being exploited by both unsavory criminals and law enforcement. It was also a jump in how they protected active data, instead of the past data at rest protections that have been around since the 3gs.

I'm aiming to circle back to that longer explanation of iPhone encryption changes likely this week or into the weekend. Which will also help to clarify Apple's choice of wording on that initial Q&A page.

iOS 9.3 betas also had hints of the iCloud backups being additionally protected using the PIN. Curious to see if that made it into the release today, or if that's being bumped to iOS 10.