Apple is aware of the January 1970 date bug that bricks iPhones, will fix it in a future update

A couple of days ago news emerged about an odd but deadly bug for 64-bit iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch units - setting your date to January 1, 1970 and then restarting the device will result in a pretty much unfixable bootloop. If you do this for whatever reason, you'll need to visit your local Apple Store to fix the problem, because you won't be able to get rid of it at home.

Now after the Internet was filled with people being generally angry about all this, as well as others, amazingly, trying it even after they knew the consequences, Apple has acknowledged the existence of the bug. The company promises to fix it as soon as possible and incorporate that fix in a future software update that will go out to all affected devices. A timeline for that rollout hasn't been provided unfortunately.

Apparently you don't even have to set the date to precisely January 1, 1970, for the bug to do its magic - any date prior to June 1, 1970 will work. Obviously the big mystery here remains why anyone would do something like this and change the date to one from 1970. To top it all off, people have reportedly been going to Apple Stores and changing dates on the demo devices on display there, with the sole intent of bricking them.

Source | Via