Sadly, this isn’t some lame urban legend. A reddit post has been getting online attention earlier this week, as it claims that changing the date and time settings of 64-bit iOS devices to Jan. 1, 1970 will cause them to get stuck booting up when switched off. According to The Guardian, some users have tried to disprove the post and just ended up turning their devices into expensive yet useless bricks.
The bug causes Apple’s OS to crash and although there isn’t a clear explanation yet as of the moment, Tech Insider speculates that it may have something to do with changing the time zones. Apparently, setting the date to Jan. 1, 1970 will trigger a time value less than zero, confusing how iOS stores its date and time formats and ultimately causes Apple devices to crash.
The date bug affects phones and tablets with 64-bit processors running iOS 8 or iOS 9. This means the iPhone 5S, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, and even the sixth generation iPod touch may be affected.
We strongly suggest you don’t give this a try.
