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After six tries a rate limit is reached. There is no cool down period. You have to connect it to your computer and login to apple, or wipe it.

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Is that rate limit hardware based? or implemented in software? If it's software, they can update it at any time.

Hardware. There is a chip (or a SoC component) called Secure Enclave that holds the real encryption key and accepts PINs or fingerprint data and releases the key.

Of course, there is the potential that Secure Enclave could be updated with new microcode (I have no idea if that is actually possible).

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