Got hit by the 1970 iPhone bug and now your device won’t turn back on? Don’t worry. Your phone isn’t permanently bricked. You can fix it a couple of different ways -- including making an appointment with the Genius Bar. iDigitalTimes staff reporter Cammy Harbison reached out as a customer to Apple Support personnel and the representative informed her Genius Bar associates were capable of remedying the problem.
"What they [affected users] need to do is go ahead and get the iPhone into an Apple Store," the representative said.
For iPhone, iPad and iPod owners who set their device clocks back to Jan. 1, 1970, in hopes of unlocking a retro Apple logo on their boot screen, they soon discovered the alleged Easter egg was nothing more than a cruel prank. Setting the clock back didn’t render a funky multicolored Apple boot logo -- instead, it bricked the device. After shutting their devices down, if users tried to turn them back on they would get stuck with the black or white Apple logo frozen on the screen. If users tried to restore the device using iTunes they ran into the same problem -- an endless boot loop issue.
Why Does Setting iPhone Clock To January 1, 1970, Cause It Not To Turn On?
The 1970 iPhone bug is believed to occur because of an extremely geeky thing known as the Unix Epoch . It’s basically like a “beginning of time” type thing for Unix-based devices, meaning that date is the one that sets the clock on Unix-based device to all zeros. Well, anyone with some background in programming knows the problem zeros can cause. When you take a time and set it to zero that can be all fine and dandy. Until you try to multiply or divide. The you end up with an endless boot loop because, as anyone with a 5 th grade education knows, dividing or multiplying zero by any number is always going to equal zero aaaaaand boot loop. (If you want to know more about the geeky mathiness behind the iPhone 1970, this guy’s video is just what the doctor ordered).
Who Started The 1970 iPhone Logo Rumor?
The iPhone 1970 bug got started in the same way a number of malicious iPhone hoaxes have – on 4Chan. The hoax was disseminated on social media sites like Twitter and before long, everybody and their brother was bricking their iPhones with the bug.
Is There Another Way To Fix The Bug Without Visiting An Apple Store?
While initially it was believed the bug couldn’t be fixed without replacing the device itself, some users discovered removing their iPhone battery and completely draining it – which actually takes a few days since most batteries reserve at least 3% to maintain the internal clock -- could do the trick. If you don’t want to try removing and draining the battery yourself, though, setting up a Genius Bar appointment would be the best thing to do.
On Monday a dedicated support page was set up to address the 1970 iPhone bug, stating that a software update that would prevent the issue was in the works.
