>Now, it's the FBI sending a giant "screw you" to Apple by not only letting them know they were able to hack into the phone without Apple's help but at the same time, making a mockery of Apple's entire security claims.
>it's pretty obvious that Apple has been outsmarted by a government agency.
I disagree with this assessment. It's not very surprising that the FBI was able to hack into a particular iPhone by focusing all available resources on the task. Given their previous duplicity, I would not even believe the claim without real evidence. Furthermore, I would not be surprised if they'd already hacked into it weeks ago. After all, their objective here was never to hack into the phone, but to establish a legal precedent that would force companies like Apple to comply with their future wishes. Apple has well and truly won, and the FBI is at this point trying (and succeeding, sadly) to save face.
I would speculate that Apple are asking them about it publicly because they know that the FBI will not comply with such a demand, thus making the FBI look bad, since it is now (purportedly) putting the security of millions of consumer devices at stake. They may also suspect that the FBI has not legitimately hacked into the phone, which remains a possibility. Or, as is more likely, that the FBI's method required large resources and could not be applied to many iphones at once, for instance.