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""Suppose that only about 5 people can do what the FBI wants done." Maybe 5 people now can do that, but give a smart programmer (I'm sure Apple has more than a

• zaphar 11y ago
  I'm a pretty decent engineer. Give me the source code and I guarantee that the first month will be almost entirely figuring out what it does and where it does it. IOS is a and complex system. There will be a LOT of source code. Just figuring out which parts actually matter will be a challenge. Add in that I'm probably not super enthusiastic about the task and that month could end up being two months. And the end result due to unfamiliarity and stress has a non-zero chance of messing up and accidentally wiping the phone anyway. Notice I didn't use quotes there. You would need some significant qa resources to ensure that I didn't mess anything up. Or maybe I'm wrong and there is a clearly marked single easy place to make all the changes that Apple has requested to make and there are already unit tests that verify it does something it wasn't originally designed to do. Then sure a few weeks time is all it will take. But Apple estimated 6 months for trained familiar engineers. Anyone else and we could be looking at close to a year.