"During this step, both the iPad and the Mac had to be connected to the Internet simultaneously." I suspect this step sets up encryption keys between the 2 dev

"During this step, both the iPad and the Mac had to be connected to the Internet simultaneously." I suspect this step sets up encryption keys between the 2 devices so that Apple's servers can be used to transfer and temporarily buffer encrypted sync messages without being able to recover the plaintext data. Since these keys aren't known by the user (or Apple) there's no way to recover your keychain (and no point in storing the data permanently... if the devices are lost so are the keys) I wish they would explain it in more detail for those of us who care, but I don't think this proves they're lying.