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a feather from Civil War era bald eagle mascot "Old Abe" (Wisconsin), fabric from the Wright brothers' 1903 aircraft (Ohio), and an AI generated response from Anthropic's Claude submitted by California imagining the state 250 years from now.​

One of these things is not like the others.

I suppose it's fair though for the people of the future to know that the people of our time had lost all creativity, imagination, and hope for the future.
 
250 years from now: This device is not able to download your brainwaves - those poor people had to think on their own without their Cerebral Core with Intel Processors!
 
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Did they remove the battery?.
Left instructions to charge it (voltage, amperes, pins)?. I don’t think usbc is around 200 years later…
Surely people at that time will wonder and reflect ñ at the “simplicity of yore” and “golden age of designs and devices…”.
 
Wow, I guess I'm slow, or maybe it was strangely worded (or perhaps both!), but I was scratching my head at the "contributions from all 56 states". I wasn't reading closely, so I'm sitting here wondering how I missed 6 new states! I failed to notice the 56 states AND territories! LOL
 
There will be no way to charge it or use it if you own a Mac.

But there will still be working Windows XP computers by then and iTunes will still work, so should be fine. I hope they included a USBA-C cable…

The Apple activation servers won't even be up in 250 years.
 
Funny enough, if it works, it'll still be a brick since you won't be able to activate it. Either because there are no activation servers anymore or because Apple's certificate for connecting to their servers has to be renewed thus it will fail to activate

Even today on an already activated and set up phone, a shocking number of things would completely break if Apple ceased operations abruptly.

Kind of crazy to think about.
 
A peculiar choice for a time capsule. Does is supposed to showcase great American achievements? I hope they've included as well a picture of the homeless hungry child sleeping under the bush at the Golden Gate Park (this is not a metaphor, since a large homeless population inhabits Bay Area and children are seen often). Just to increase fairness on the retrospect on the 250 years of the self declare greatness.
 
For anyone who owns this device, it’s best to keep it for many years to come. It might be worth something if we’re still around in the future.
 


An iPhone 17 Pro Max in Cosmic Orange has been sealed inside a 250 year time capsule as part of America's Semiquincentennial celebrations, with the device not due to be seen again until the 23rd century.

iPhone-17-Pro-Cosmic-Orange.jpg

America250, the congressionally appointed nonprofit leading the 250th anniversary celebrations, announced that "America's Time Capsule" was officially sealed and buried at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia on July 4, 2026, to be reopened in 2276.

The iPhone was included through America250's "America Innovates" initiative as a representative of the cutting edge of American innovation and technology in 2026, with the device showcasing advances in handheld computing, imaging, and connectivity that have transformed how people work, communicate, and create in the 21st century. The device contains "digital artifacts" in the Notes app, intended to give whoever opens the capsule in 2276 a small window into everyday life in 2026.

The capsule itself was built to give the iPhone and everything else inside it the best possible chance of surviving intact. Developed with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and preservation experts at the Library of Congress, it uses a 900 pound, precision milled stainless steel cylinder sealed with indium, a soft metal that deforms under compression to fill microscopic imperfections in the sealing groove. It was covered with a 1,100 pound stainless steel bell jar that creates a protective air pocket to keep the vessel dry underground.

Beyond the iPhone, the capsule holds contributions from all 56 states and territories and all three branches of the federal government, including a feather from Civil War era bald eagle mascot "Old Abe" (Wisconsin), fabric from the Wright brothers' 1903 aircraft (Ohio), and an AI generated response from Anthropic's Claude submitted by California imagining the state 250 years from now.

Article Link: iPhone 17 Pro Max Sealed in Time Capsule Until 2276
Look, Elonska, this was a time when people had 3-burner portable stoves with rectangular pancake griddles because they were always on the go and still consumed food through the mouth! This was just a decade before your great-great-great-great-greatest granduncle landed on PlanetX and got lost in space on his way back to Mars …
 
As BorisDG noted in the 13th post, the charges in the NAND will have depleted by the time 2276.

But I wonder if Apple has done something special for this iPhone and built a custom read-only hard-coded substitute storage chip that doesn't rely on electrons that would bleed away through the insulation.
 
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