[Swordmaker]

This stupid user trick essentially puts the UNIX of the iPhone back to the ZERO data point and you wind up with some divide by zero errors. It is similar to the errors that would have occurred when the clocks of Windows computers would have rolled over when the new millennium started had not a lot of work been done to change things in programming before that deadline (remember all of that?) The UNIX roll over date is still in the future, but the UNIX starting ZERO date was set at 01.01.1970:00,00,00 and the number of possible seconds it can count will run out on 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038.

Apple made it as difficult as possible for a user to reset the clock back to 01/01/1970, dropping the user out of the setting not once, but I think, four times, and then requiring a reset of the iPhone for it to take. However, the system should have not permitted that time setting at all. That needs to be fixed.

[Swordmaker]

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! Do not allow a friend to offer to show you a neat trick on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch! It will BRICK your device, perhaps beyond even the Apple Genius Bar's ability to fix it quickly. It's possible this trick could even hit Android devices as they are also UNIX like devices as it takes advantage of a quirk built into the UNIX system having to do with the limitation of the clock. JUST DON'T DO IT. Apple has made it difficult to do this STUPID USE TRICK, but it is still possible, they should have made it impossible. -- PING!

STUPID iOS USER TRICK BRICKS iOS DEVICES!
Ping!

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[envisio]

Change date? Why?
You mean, like, it won’t make calls anymore?

I don’t get it and please don’t use up alot of energy explaining it because I probably still won’t get it.
And that’s just fine by me. I got one more day of waterfowl season so I’m going to the woods to be quiet.

[Wolfie]

Yeah, but will it break the iPhone?

[Organic Panic]

Beat me to it. Unix time began Jan 1 1970.

[TomGuy]

I have a Motorola Moto E.

I am not going to try that because I do not want to “brick” my phone.

[What is ‘bricking’ a smartphone?]

[Lajmaiz]

My teenage son did this. Going to the Apple Store today.

[Talisker]

I would imagine an update could be made where that date is simply not allowed to be inputted at all.

[SamAdams76]

I wish I could go back to January 1, 1970, knowing what I know now.

[BushCountry]

Y2K is still alive!

[Rockpile]

I seized up an I-pad to frozen on the Apple logo by doing an incredibly moronic stupid stupid stupid idiot halfwit bozo imbecile action.....

I downloaded upgraded software from Apple.
XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

A kid at the Apple store took it to the backroom and got it running after awhile.

[Larry Lucido]

Damn it. I followed the instructions and it bricked my phone!

[outofsalt]

No matter what, NEVER devide by zero!

[moovova]

I tried that in my Delorean and it took me back to 1970.

Don’t believe what they say about having “it all to do again” and being smarter about it the second time around.

[Neidermeyer]

UNIX of the iPhone
***************
Apple gave up on their own OS’s years ago and they run a customized Unix ... so why all the non-stop hate for Android?

[Junk Silver]

This thread is technically inaccurate. Setting an i-phone or other IOS device to the UNIX “0” date automatically routes Federal funds to the “Hillary 2016” campaign and also automatically generates thousands of Facebook “likes” for pro-Hillary posts. Every sincere Clinton supporter should do this immediately.

Seriously, one of my kids fell for this prank, it took the Apple store 10 minutes to fix it and they didn’t even charge us for.

[rigelkentaurus]

Actually, this “trick” is a space-time continuum issue. Setting the date for 1 Jan 1970 is pre-Apple founding. So doing so is impossible, as your iPhone would exist in a time before the company Apple was founded, making it a paradox, hence the iPhone is bricked.

[Sergio]

Tech bkmk.

[Defiant]

the number of possible seconds it can count will run out on 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038.

What are Apple and all those Linux people planning to do to get rid of the Y2K+38 bug? Or are they just not going to worry about it until 2036? After all, we may be governed by robots or Muslims then, anyway.

[Darth Reardon]

But it wouldn’t set time_t to 0 for anyone in the Western Hemisphere?

[ThunderSleeps]

As a software guy, I'm not big on conditional code (that's another discussion) but... How hard would it have been to put a simple "if(0 == time_count) then time_count = 1;" -- where time_count is the seconds "tick" of the typical Unix clock -- type sanity check in any time set routine?

We check literally everything we get from a user or outside entity (network, file, shared memory, etc).