Apple Will Fix 'January 1, 1970' Date Bug in Upcoming iOS Update

[2010mini]

Because there are emails and Facebook posts going around, saying that if you set your phone to that date, something amazing will happen - like one where it stated that it activates some retro mode and makes the phone look like mobile phones in the 70s (which is not that far from the truth). Some even have pictures of the iPhone with the old rainbow Apple logo.

It's interesting to see how many people here immediately assume that people who do this are dumb. There are a lot of "easter eggs" on websites, in electronic devices or in computer games. People are used to this kind of thing. So they think it's probably something funny, and then they do it.

For example, go to Google and type "do a barrel roll". Funny result, isn't it? Ha. Ha. Did you do it? Yes? If so, then what if this simple innocent little thing had bricked your computer or your mobile device? Then you'd be just as "dumb" as those people who set the date on their iPhone to 1970.

Yes, you are absolutely stupid if you take anything posted on Facebook, or an social media, at face value without researching it first. Like all the idiots who think a picture of a dog with a piece of ham on his face was a tortured pet. Idiots!

 

[bkaus]

Because there are emails and Facebook posts going around, saying that if you set your phone to that date, something amazing will happen - like one where it stated that it activates some retro mode and makes the phone look like mobile phones in the 70s (which is not that far from the truth). Some even have pictures of the iPhone with the old rainbow Apple logo.

It's interesting to see how many people here immediately assume that people who do this are dumb. There are a lot of "easter eggs" on websites, in electronic devices or in computer games. People are used to this kind of thing. So they think it's probably something funny, and then they do it.

For example, go to Google and type "do a barrel roll". Funny result, isn't it? Ha. Ha. Did you do it? Yes? If so, then what if this simple innocent little thing had bricked your computer or your mobile device? Then you'd be just as "dumb" as those people who set the date on their iPhone to 1970.

This is why there are spam emails, viruses, and before that people mailing money to whatever lawyer in some country that was going to provide them an inheritance.

Some people probably deserve what they get...

 

[jtrenda33]

I'd hardly consider this a bug. A software bug is when software behaves in an unintended way while it is being used as intended.

 

[arkmannj]

Should be an easy fix I would think.
Just prevent the phone's date/time GUI tools from being set to anything before June 29, 2007 (or any date after 1970, I just picked that date because it is when the 1st iPhone was released.)
no need to really "fix" the UNIX underpinnings, all the fix needs to do is stop people from committing the date/time change to the system.

 

[mountain]

Now people can use their devices again.

 

[C DM]

Yes, you are absolutely stupid if you take anything posted on Facebook, or an social media, at face value without researching it first. Like all the idiots who think a picture of a dog with a piece of ham on his face was a tortured pet. Idiots!

That said, why would anyone even consider that changing the date without doing anything strange or weird using the built in settings app with the options it provides would do anything to the device that couldn't be undone by changing the date back again? There's no reason to suspect something basic like that could or would do anything bad, nor should there be.

 

[leesweet]

So, did anyone notice that the Apple Support page says not 'don't set it to 1/1/1970' but 'not before May 1970'? Looks like it's not just 1/1/70 (if that's really date 0 or something else, since iOS date 0 appears to be another year?), but there is another glitch going on here.

Perhaps some range of values not being handled correctly? Stranger and stranger...

 

[C DM]

I'd hardly consider this a bug. A software bug is when software behaves in an unintended way while it is being used as intended.

And changing the date using the built in functionality of the OS isn't supposed to do anything other than change the date--if it does, then it's a bug.

 

[Radon87000]

So, did anyone notice that the Apple Support page says not 'don't set it to 1/1/1970' but 'not before May 1970'? Looks like it's not just 1/1/70 (if that's really date 0 or something else, since iOS date 0 appears to be another year?), but there is another glitch going on here.

Perhaps some range of values not being handled correctly? Stranger and stranger...

I noticed that too.If the negative time values was the reason why does Apple say it happens for any month before May

 

[Taz Mangus]

Apple should prevent idiots from doing idiotic things with their hardware?
What possible reason is there to set any clock back that far?

I agree. This is certainly a obsucure bug. But as usual it is turned into a mountain of a problem.

 

[lordofthereef]

If you routinely encountered data loss while using some piece of software exactly as intended, I'd call that a horrible bug. This is...not comparable.

A bug is anything in software that works unintended. Regardless of where I set my date to, it shouldn't render my device unusable. Are people making a mistake for doing this? Sure. It still shouldn't be happening.

Apple makes damn sure we can't break out phones by locking everything down and stopping us from root access, sideloading apps, etc. And yet, a simple oversight with how the data and time is coded renders the device useless. AND it's the user's fault? Yeah, this is a horrible bug that should be (and is being) pathced.

 

[kdarling]

Yes, you are absolutely stupid if you take anything posted on Facebook, or an social media, at face value without researching it first.

That's true.

However, to be fair, even thoughtful people will quite often believe whatever they read on the internet... without doing any further research.

Just look at all the people who every day innocently believe nonsense reports about patents, trials, future hardware, past history, etc.

Heck, most people have no time to do research. Many simply remember whatever a click bait headline said.

 

[Keirasplace]

Apple should figure something out, whatever it is that would make sense, as it is an their own issue that caused this through regular change of settings without the user doing anything that Apple didn't want them to do or wanted to prevent them from doing (given that the setting was there available to be selected).

Again, dividing by 0 makes no sense on a calculator and most people wouldn't run into that under normal circumstances, but it doesn't mean that it would be OK for a calculator to just completely stop working and the manufacturer just tell the people who run into that (again, whatever the reason) that it's too bad for them. That's rather silly.

Do you actually read what the hell you write, divide by zero can easily be done in normal operation by accident, if that was the case this bug would have showed up 5 years ago. Got that. Use logic instead of a strawman.

This is a fringe case that's not happening by accident; people even question why you should go that far back.

The airbag thing is a perfect analogy. You know there is something really bad that can occur under specific circumstances, you do it anyway just for kicks and the go hit something to see if it is true. You risk your life. And yes, losing your life is pretty much "bricking" yourself.
[doublepost=1455636941][/doublepost]

If it were only iOS, I'd be happy. Last week, I updated my OS X version, because Final Cut Pro didn't want to start with my old version anymore. Fine. Then it asked me to also update Final Cut Pro. Fine. Then Final Cut Pro started, but crashed reproducibly in one of the first steps of creating a project (when importing media files). Reproducibly. It's unusable now. Well, fine then. Used Adobe Premiere. But here's the real kicker: On the next startup, OS X got stuck with the progress bar at 50%. No way to start my Mac anymore. I think for the vast majority of users, this would have meant a trip to the next Apple Store (for me, it was a boot into safe mode - but that is not something I expect an average user to know about). Great job there, Apple. A broken Final Cut Pro and a broken Mac within one day. And no, this kind of thing didn't happen five years ago. That's not nostalgia. There is a clear decline in quality.

So I definitely see that decline in quality not only with each iOS release, but also with each release of each bit of software Apple is releasing. And I don't blame Tim Cook. Steve "You're holding it wrong" Jobs presided over goof-ups as well. I blame the Apple strategy of having a new iOS version each year, a new OS X version each year and then new versions of their software to match these new OS versions. That. Does. Not. Work. And that's not Cook's fault. That is Jobs' legacy that Apple can't get out of now, because if they announce a delay in any of this, the share price will tumble.

Right... When Jobs almost bricked (made really really slow) phone that had came out just 1 year earlier with early IOS versions, that was well, good quality! What you see is confirmation bias.

Also, this bug has likely been there since Jobs was in charge, so please be the tiny violins. It only showed up when the CPU got changed but it was likely already in the code base. That a bug doesn't do anything... yet.. Doesn't mean it still isn't a bug. A bug that doesn't crash your phone could be doing something else, or could be used as a part of an exploit.

There are at all time hundreds of bugs in a OS (any of them), many of them can crash it and stop reboot under the right circumstance.

 

[C DM]

Do you actually read what the hell you write, divide by zero can easily be done in normal operation by accident, if that was the case this bug would have showed up 5 years ago. Got that. Use logic instead of a strawman.

This is a fringe case that's not happening by accident; people even question why you should go that far back.

The airbag thing is a perfect analogy. You know there is something really bad that can occur under specific circumstances, you do it anyway just for kicks and the go hit something to see if it is true. You risk your life. And yes, losing your life is pretty much "bricking" yourself.

Dividing by zero is just as innocuous as changing the date using the built it settings app should be. If anything it's the discussion about it taking more actions to do it than it would take to divide by zero on a calculator is the strawman in all of that as it just deflects trying to focus on something that isn't relevant. If the basic functionality provided by be manufacturer is at fault for disabling the device, then the manufacturer is responsible for it. It's that simple.

 

[lordofthereef]

Yes, you are absolutely stupid if you take anything posted on Facebook, or an social media, at face value without researching it first.

Here is the problem. There are generational issues. Plenty of young kids these days have iPhones. Let's say a ten year old does this. Let's say an elderly person does this, one who doesn't really understand technology. Recently I have seen videos embedded in facebook that allow me to use the gyroscope for a full 360 degree view of what's happening in the shot; to someone like my grandmother (hell, mother even), that is pretty unbelievable. It makes less sense to her that this is possible than the fact that rolling her date back should brick her phone.

Further, we constantly see things like "type this in google and then click 'I'm feeling lucky' to see what happens," or "go to this url and click here", and etc. Our daily lives are filled with "hey check this out" moments that don't generally get vetted on every ocassion. I think calling someone stupid over this is rather harsh.

My point is, it's easy to dismiss a gullible or uninformed person as stupid. Nobody expects setting their clock back to a specific date is going to "blow up" their phone because, frankly, it shouldn't. Blaming the victim here is silly. The entities at fauly are, first and foremost, those who lied about a "feature" in order to purposely caus eyou to do harm to your device. And of course Apple, however they are fixing the issue, which is great.

 

[Keirasplace]

Actually at maximum it is 2 years and change old.

How do you know that? It's very likely that they ported code over, and possibly that's the reason for this. This looks like a boundary issue linked to a variable, something that would be affected if code is ported blindly.

 

[C DM]

That's true.

However, to be fair, even thoughtful people will quite often believe whatever they read on the internet... without doing any further research.

Just look at all the people who every day innocently believe nonsense reports about patents, trials, future hardware, past history, etc.

Heck, most people have no time to do research. Many simply remember whatever a click bait headline said.

And in a case like this that doesn't even really play as much of a role given that it's fairly unrealistic to suspect that something really basic like simply changing the date using the built in settings app would really result in something bad, let alone irreversible and completely disabling.

 

[lordofthereef]

Heck, most people have no time to do research. Many simply remember whatever a click bait headline said.

Perhaps a lot of the reason why click bait healdines exist?

 

[rhett7660]

This is a warning for us to never attempt time travel.

Nailed it! Don't screw around with the space time continuum. This is just a mild taste of what can happen!

 

[MentalFloss]

Yes, you are absolutely stupid if you take anything posted on Facebook, or an social media, at face value without researching it first. Like all the idiots who think a picture of a dog with a piece of ham on his face was a tortured pet. Idiots!

Sure. But if someone tells me to do something innocent like "Twiddle your thumbs three times" or "Type this search term into Google" or "Change the time and date on your mobile phone", I am willing to give it a try, just to see what happens.

And that is the problem here: Changing the date on your mobile phone should be roughly as dangerous as twiddling your thumbs. I have a degree in computer science. I have 30 years of experience developing software. I deal with crazy bugs in my job on a daily basis. I work on low-level mobile phone software (i.e. below the OS). And yet, I STILL would not have believed that changing the date on your mobile phone would brick it into an unrecoverable state. A crash? Yes, I could have believed that. Complete brickage? No, never!

You call people idiots who are stupid enoug to try this? Well, I call people idiots who actually defend Apple in this.
[doublepost=1455639415][/doublepost]

I'd hardly consider this a bug. A software bug is when software behaves in an unintended way while it is being used as intended.

Please tell me you are not working in software development.

If the user interface allows something, then it is automatically an intended behaviour. Period. If it weren't intended, then Apple would have disabled this functionality in the user interface. That is one of the core principles of software development: You don't allow any inputs into a software module that it is not intended to process.

And another principle is that you test your modules for corner cases. There should be module tests somewhere in the iOS development that check what happens when the lowest and the highest possible date/time combinations are fed into the phone. Those module test obviously do not exist. That is unacceptably amateurish. Not the kind of "**** happens!" bug, but the kind of "Fire the developer!" bug.

 

[2010mini]

Sure. But if someone tells me to do something innocent like "Twiddle your thumbs three times" or "Type this search term into Google" or "Change the time and date on your mobile phone", I am willing to give it a try, just to see what happens.

And that is the problem here: Changing the date on your mobile phone should be roughly as dangerous as twiddling your thumbs. I have a degree in computer science. I have 30 years of experience developing software. I deal with crazy bugs in my job on a daily basis. I work on low-level mobile phone software (i.e. below the OS). And yet, I STILL would not have believed that changing the date on your mobile phone would brick it into an unrecoverable state. A crash? Yes, I could have believed that. Complete brickage? No, never!

You call people idiots who are stupid enoug to try this? Well, I call people idiots who actually defend Apple in this

I am not defending Apple. I am just not defending idiocity. The first thing that came to mind when I saw the fake post going around was "why change my phone's date so far back?" One quick search and I found out what this was.

Compared to you I am a average tech user. Yet I didn't fall for this prank. I have never nor will I ever "click here" or "do this and see what happens" on any of my devices.

Hey my car's speedometer goes up to 150mph. But I would be a total idiot to try and take it to that limit. Even though the manufacture says it can..... (Yes there have been people who have done such things and end up with a blown engine.... Maybe they should blame the manufacture too)

 

[adam9c1]

Just out of curiosity, why should the system even allow you to change the clock to a date in the past? I can't think of any reason someone might want to do this, other than to screw with someone and cause a headache, or purposely temporarily brick a device in this case.

My network admin blocks NTP. Don't ask me why. All (iOS) devices must be set manually.

 

[Keirasplace]

Wow. I think by "large issues" rdlink was simply referring to the fact that the phone is bricked, which is a large issue compared to, say, if the phone simply restarted once on its own. Issues relating to something as seemingly trivial as a computer's date/time setting seem like they would be much much smaller, so it's funny/interesting that they're actually large. That's all I got from his/her post, and I agree with him/her. As to the frequency of this particular issue or whether or not these people are justified in getting their phones fixed by Apple for free, I don't know what rdlink believes because it isn't apparent from his/her comment.

The phone isn't bricked since it seems to be recoverable. I'm really tired of the ridiculous use of "bricked" these days.
[doublepost=1455644994][/doublepost]

When I was in the Apple Store to get my sons phone exchanged (couldn't be fixed of course) the genius mentioned that they were looking into the possibility that this would void the warranty. I told the guy that this is different to putting your phone in the microwave or something like that, and I understand that that voids it. However This is a setting issue, a bug with the software and therefore not something that would void anything. Apple should fix it. He agreed.

So, you just admitted your son is and idiot and that Apple should exchange him too I guess?

 

[Parasprite]

Ohh, you want to drain it beyond that? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they don't want you to do that, and you might break it that way. You can empty it a bit further by heating it up (since the batteries discharge higher voltage then, making it overestimate the charge)... but I really wouldn't do it

Or just put it in the freezer for the opposite effect.

No idea if it would think it's completely discharged that way though.

 

[Keirasplace]

Dividing by zero is just as innocuous as changing the date using the built it settings app should be. If anything it's the discussion about it taking more actions to do it than it would take to divide by zero on a calculator is the strawman in all of that as it just deflects trying to focus on something that isn't relevant. If the basic functionality provided by be manufacturer is at fault for disabling the device, then the manufacturer is responsible for it. It's that simple.

Basically, you didn't understand anything I wrote so bye, talk to yourself.