Security
The cryptanalysis capabilities of the NSA and the GCHQ are a closely guarded secret. Therefore, this secret will not be unveiled simply to assist in a criminal investigation. Therefore, it cannot be inferred that these capabilities are unequal to extracting the data from an iPhone simply because of this criminal case.
Clearly, it should be possible to bypass a restriction on how many times one can try passwords on a smartphone. Copying all the encrypted data out, and having in hand the full source code to the phone's software, it should indeed be trivial. Given this, there is no reason to endanger any capabilities the NSA may have to avoid it.
However, one might note that, given the sophistication of today's secret-key algorithms, at least, barring some flaw in Apple's security, it would be reasonable for other reasons to feel that the NSA could not read data on an iPhone by means of cryptanalysis. But this court case is not evidence one way or the other.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
