Also, the US Government has already demanded that Apple weaken device encryption.
Apple fought it in court, and the government dropped their demand rather than set a privacy precedent they wanted to avoid.
I'm not even much of a fan of Apple but I really don't think you can hold it against them when they loudly protest but ultimately comply with legal demands.
They did exactly what they should have. Their choices were build a backdoor or disable the advanced data protection feature in the UK. They also made it incredibly public.