Don't be a jerk and set all the devices at the Apple Store to that date, either.

We're not sure why you would—not unless you want to recreate the era of Anchorman or something—but some owners of iOS devices are finding that if they set their devices to some ancient time period, the devices will get stuck in a boot loop and not allow you to actually use your device in any functional way.

In other words, don't mess with the time if you don't have to.

According to reports, all you have to do is adjust any 64-bit iOS device (like an iPad Air or iPhone 5s, or newer) to January 1, 1970. Doing so might render your phone inoperable the next time you power cycle it, and this doesn't appear to be an issue that any kind of iTunes-based restore process can fix.

We don't have an official explanation from Apple for why this happens, but a few people have been speculating as to why that particular date, of all dates, can cause your device to go haywire—and why the trick might not actually ruin some peoples' devices.

"For those who got away with trying this and it not bricking your device, there's a reason why - time zones," writes one Reddit user.

"In some time zones, setting the date to 1 Jan 1970 will set the internal clock to a number less than zero, as the time is stored in GMT (as the number of seconds since midnight on that date) and then the offset is applied before display. In other time zones, setting the clock will result in a positive time value. Best guess is that this is triggered by having the time value less than zero."

That said, it appears as if some Apple Genius Bar employees have already found and shared an easy fix for devices that get caught by this bug—intentionally or otherwise. Disconnecting the device's internal battery and reconnecting it allows your device to boot to its lock screen once again. That's not something a normal person will be able to do, but a trick that Apple employees should be able to do rather quickly if one of your friends, say, zapped your device.

Of course, that's not to say that some attacker spoofing an NTP server, which your device uses to ensure it has the correct time, couldn't cause a whole host of trouble for a number of iOS devices at once—at least, until Apple patches up this little bug. According to The Guardian, Apple is allegedly looking into the issue.