A Possible Explanation for the iPhone Bug That Causes the Device to Brick When the Date Is Set to January 1, 1970
by Glen Tickle from Laughing Squid on (#1415K)
Tom Scott provides a possible explanation for the 1/1/1970 iPhone bug that causes the device to brick when the date is set to January 1, 1970. Scott confidently claims that the bug is, "almost certainly an integer underflow caused by the Unix epoch," before he explains exactly what that means.
Scott also points out that this is speculation on his part, and that Apple is unlikely to ever confirm exactly what causes the bug, even after it is fixed.