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Update 4: It turns out the FBI was able to unlock the phone without Apple's help, and because of this they dropped their case against Apple. IMO, overall this is bad news for Apple because it means that their security (at least on that type of phone) was not as strong as previously thought. Now the FBI has offered to help local law enforcement unlock other iPhones too.

Update 2: Some experts have suggested that it is theoretically possible for the FBI to use special tools to extract the device ID from the phone. Having that plus some determination and it should be possible to brute force the pin of the phone offline without Apple's assistance. Whether this is practically possible without destroying the phone remains to be seen, but it is interesting to note that if it can be done, the numbers I mentioned in the above update become meaningless since offline tools could test passcodes much faster than 80ms per try. I do believe that simply knowing this is possible, or even knowing that Apple can install new firmware to brute force the passcode more slowly, does imply a slightly lessened sense of security for all users. I believe this to be true whether Apple chooses to comply with the order or not.

Update 2: Some experts have suggested that it is theoretically possible for the FBI to use special tools to extract the device ID from the phone. Having that plus some determination and it should be possible to brute force the pin of the phone offline without Apple's assistance. Whether this is practically possible without destroying the phone remains to be seen, but it is interesting to note that if it can be done, the numbers I mentioned in the above update become meaningless since offline tools could test passcodes much faster than 80ms per try. I do believe that simply knowing this is possible, or even knowing that Apple can install new firmware to brute force the passcode more quickly, does imply a slightly lessened sense of security for all users. I believe this to be true whether Apple chooses to comply with the order or not.

Update 3: It appears that the passcode to unlock the phone was in fact simply a 4 digit code. I find this interesting because this means the FBI asked Apple to do more than was necessary. They could have simply asked Apple to disable the wipe feature and timing delay after an incorrect attempt. With only those 2 changes one could manually attempt all 10,000 possible 4 digit codes in under 14 hours (at 5 seconds per attempt). The fact that the FBI also demanded that Apple allow them to brute force electronically seems odd to me, when they knew they didn't need it.