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This bug will render your Apple devices useless

“I changed the time to January 1st 1970”, NBC News quotes one poor iPhone user’s complaint to Apple. O.K., let’s say your iPhone or iPad is bricked because you changed the date back.

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Several pictures are being circulated around the internet saying if you change the date to January 1, 1970, the phone will feature retro Apple logos and themes.

A new iPhone bug has popped up that will make the device unusable. Manually setting your Apple gadget to that date apparently causes a conflict that will chock the device.

But, instead of time travel, all they got was a bricked phone. In other words, when your parents told you not to talk with your mouth full, did you start talking as soon as you took a bite of food? If you do indeed follow the instructions given to you in the image below, your device will seek out and initiate a Unix glitch – unless you’re unlucky. “Best guess is that this is triggered by having the time value less than zero”.

However, CNN Money speculates it has to do with Unix time.

This problem is rendering any iPhone 5s and up to become useless.

Fast forward to 2015 and we’ve seen the same images again, spreading just this week through Facebook, Twitter, and the like. So there you sit with your bricked iOS device, kicking yourself for not listening. Apple hasn’t released an official statement regarding why this is happening.

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That said, it appears as if some Apple Genius Bar employees have already found and shared an easy fix for devices that get caught by this bug-intentionally or otherwise.

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