Posting an update to its support pages, Apple has
revealed that changing the date to January 1 1970 on any iPhone, iPad or iPod
touch running iOS 8.x or iOS 9.x can stop it from turning on the next time it
is restarted. It has confirmed a preventative fix for this will be released
soon and in the meantime anyone already affected by the bug should contact
Apple support (given their devices won’t be able to switch on to receive the
update).
Of course the obvious question here is: Why would
anyone change the date on their device to January 1 1970? The answer: to
unlock easter eggs.
Yes, this was the promise made on a Reddit thread last week.
It claimed any user who rolled back their device to this date would unlock a
secret 1970s themed hidden feature. Instead they were greeted by something far
more literally reminiscent of 1970s computing, a device which would turn on. In
fact even placing the device in Recovery Mode (hold sleep/wake and home buttons
continuously until you see the recovery screen – about 15 to 20 seconds) failed
to address the problem.
That should’ve been the end of it, but it gained momentum as
a (predictably) evil trick friends and coworkers began playing on one another.
It is worth pointing out that, despite Apple’s promise of a
quick fix, users running iOS 8 are unlikely to get a fix unless they update to
iOS 9 as Apple no longer supports iOS 8. Of course the other obvious way to
avoid this bug is to not do something you were incredibly unlikely to do in the
first place…
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