Apple has finally acknowledge a rather quirky but seemingly dangerous bug that affects 64-bit iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch). The company has announced that a fix will arrive through a sofware update, solving the “1970” bug.
According to Apple, manually changing the date to May 1970 or earlier can prevent iOS devices from turning on after rebooting. However, Apple hasn’t provided a temporary solution for affected users. Instead, users facing the issue can contact Apple Support. If you change the date to January 1, 1970, you might end up bricking your device from an endless bootloop.
YouTuber and programmer Tom Scott has explained the reason behind this bug, claiming that January 1, 1970 is 0 in Unix time, which results in an integer underflow. The underflow is countered by iOS with the returning of the negative integer to the maximum value. Scott goes on to explain that iOS has problems handling a “large numbered” date, and results in a crash.
German site Apfelpage.de has came out with a solution that could temporarily fix the problem, but requires opening up the iPhone and a resetting its battery. But this method can result in voiding your device’s warranty, or worse, damaging the device’s internals if you’re not careful. Hence, a safer bet is to go to your nearest Apple Service Centre or contact Apple Support whie waiting for the software update.
Source: Mac Rumors
