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Apple Confirms Ridiculous But Serious iOS Problem

This article is more than 8 years old.

It began as a bad practical joke, but now Apple has confirmed an iOS bug that is no laughing matter…  

Posting an update to its support pages, Apple has revealed that changing the date to January 1 1970 on any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 8.x or iOS 9.x (including the latest iOS 9.2.1 release) can stop it from turning on the next time it is restarted. It has confirmed a preventative fix for this will be released soon and in the meantime anyone already affected by the bug should contact Apple support (given their devices won’t be able to switch on to receive the update).

Of course the obvious question here is: Why would anyone change the date on their device to January 1 1970? The answer: to unlock easter eggs.

Yes, this was the promise made on a Reddit thread last week. It claimed any user who rolled back their device to this date would unlock a secret 1970s themed hidden feature. Instead they were greeted by something far more literally reminiscent of 1970s computing, a device which won't turn on. In fact even placing the device in Recovery Mode (hold sleep/wake and home buttons continuously until you see the recovery screen - about 15 to 20 seconds) failed to address the problem.

That should’ve been the end of it, but it gained momentum as a (predictably) evil trick friends and coworkers began playing on one another.

It is worth pointing out that, despite Apple’s promise of a quick fix, users running iOS 8 are unlikely to get a fix unless they update to iOS 9 as Apple no longer supports iOS 8. Of course the other obvious way to avoid this bug is to not do something you were incredibly unlikely to do in the first place…

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