Plugging in this date will permanently crash your iPhone

A new bug which has been rendering iPhone and iPad devices useless has been discovered online. “If you turn your date and time settings to manual (please don’t do this), and scroll the calendar back as far as you can go (seriously, don’t do this), you can only go as far back as January 1, 1970”, CNN Money noted.

What’s the truth of this?

Your iPhone really hates the date January 1, 1970.

On Thursday, someone posted an image on 4Chan sending people on a “blast from the past” “easter egg” hunt on their 64-bit iOS devices.

Putting aside how suspicious the suggestion of this Easter egg is (1970 is years before Apple was even founded, let alone releasing Macintoshes), it certainly appeals to our sense of discovery.

If you’re anxious about doing this by accident, don’t. However, it’s possible – at least in theory – that someone with time and malicious intent could trick a phone connected to a network into resetting its date by pretending to be a time server.

iPhones set the date automatically, but users can manually select the date.

There’s no way for victims of the bug to restore their devices, apparently, other than to visit the genius bar at the Apple Store. It’s worth noting, by the way, that the very first Apple computer, the Apple I, came out not in 1970, but in 1976.