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> i believe the answer is no. that even if they patched software.. the chip involved is not going to (or physixally can't) cooperate

Indeed.

The whole point of the Secure Enclave is that it is the hardware root of trust. See the Apple Platform Security Guide[1].

The Secure Enclave also contains things like a UID (unique root cryptographic key) and GID (Device Group ID), both of which are fused at time of manufacturing and are not externally readable, not even through debugging interfaces such as JTAG.

As hardware root of trust the Secure Enclave is fundamental to all parts of device security, including secure boot and verifying that system software (sepOS) is verified and signed by Apple.

Apple put a lot of effort into Secure Enclave and hardware revisions have brought improvements as you might expect, so always be weary if you come across old presentations !

[1] https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform-sec...