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Year 2038why is the maximum year 2038

Why is the maximum year on the iphone 5 set to 2038 even tho it use to be infinite

iPhone 5, iOS 7.1.1

Posted on May 7, 2014 10:45 AM

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Posted on Jan 21, 2016 10:36 PM

Good question!

First off, I want to let you know that the operating system has nothing to do with the fact that you can't set your date past 2038. For example, my digital camera does not run IOS, and I can't set the date past 2038 on it as well. This rule applies to almost all technologies of today, phones, computers, cameras, etc. You see, most technologies of today use something known as UNIX time. It is essentially a 32-bit number (a pretty big number) that has been counting seconds from January 1st, 1970, to right now. But, this number will eventually run out because it is finite. When this happens, on January 19th, 2038, at 3:14:07pm atomic time, something simular to the Y2K problem will occur. When that time comes, your iphone will not be able to distinguish between January 19th 2038, 3:14:08pm atomic time, and January 1st, 1901.

In laments terms, your phone can't count high enough to get past 2038, and so it thinks any time after that doesn't even exist.

The way that the technological communities have decided to fix this is by upgrading to a 64-bit system, which will last us until around the year 297,000,000,000.

I love how instead of solving the problem, we just postpone it to the point where don't care anymore.

I hope that answered your question, and I know I'm a bit late.

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Year 2038why is the maximum year 2038

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