This is an article from CNN: Plugging in this date will permanently crash your iPhone "Your iPhone really hates the date January 1, 1970. It hates it so much that it will permanently crash if you change your iPhone's time settings to that date."
Umm, are you asking us to plug in the date to see if it is true? The explanation sounds reasonable, I am curious as to what other devices use this method of time keeping and how they cope. Interesting read! Sent from my iPhone.
I'm not trying it. But I'm curious. From your link it says this : "In the videos, the iPhone works immediately after the date is set all the way back. But powering off the phone and then on again results in a perpetual greeting screen, with the Apple logo just staring back at you for the rest of time" So if it works fine right away, wouldn't the time required to turn of and reset place the internal clock to a later time ( later than 00:00:00)? So if a later time ( but around that date) bricks the phone, than the original argument is not true. Suspect a hoax. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
@viewfly, I don't understand your reasoning/question. If the phone does get bricked as described, then the most likely scenario is that one of the routines that runs at startup is somehow sensitive to the date, that's all. Also there are reports that draining the battery completely will restore the phone's operation, which stands to reason as the fully drained phones in my experience would boot up with the date set to the manufacture (or nearby) date.
@dmapr. Lots of suspicious questions. Note that the article video set the time to Jan 1, 1970, 1 PM, not midnight. And his local time is Chicago. Either way, he is not in negative time, or before Dec 31 11:59:59. If I set it to midnight GMT, and I'm on EST. and it's working fine, then wait 24 hours to reboot, then it still should be working fine? Or does it brick, even though it's Jan 2? . I guess the time is not important , but the date only? Looking at forums, I guess it can happen. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Ah I see what you're saying. Yes, it could be possible that they just take the date portion of the time for something.
So @viewfly, you were on to something: doesn't have to be "the Epoch zero": https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205248, apparently May 1970 is good enough.
And if you leave the phone on for a month past May...? JK Interesting. Truly what inspires people to discover these things? Since one doesn't have to reboot to change the time. Thanks @dmapr for the update. Truly you have a detective view on things as I do. Good that a fix update icon the way, to help the curious. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I am still curious as to how other devices that use UNIX for time handle it? Do they already have a fix or workaround built into their software? Sent from my iPad Air 2
@CDG: Ask & you shall receive... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time More info here: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=computer time and 1970
LOL, not a detective, an update popped up on GSMArena and they had a link to the Apple's KB article I don't think it's a problem that affects things globally, it must be something specific to something in iOS that runs during startup and is (from what I've seen) limited to 64-bit architecture.
@viewfly, @dmapr, @CDG - nice job digging into this! Just posting a screenshot of the Apple support page in case the link goes dead.