On 6th April 2019, a verified Twitter handle posted a photo that went viral. It was about how his three-year-old son had tried to unlock his computer severally. The young boy managed to lock his father out after countless tries.
According to his Twitter bio, Evan Osnos is a staff writer at the New Yorker, a fellow at the Brookings and an author. In his tweet, he asked followers for help on how to get back on his iPad after it logged him out for 25,536,442 minutes.
Uh, this looks fake but, alas, it’s our iPad today after 3-year-old tried (repeatedly) to unlock. Ideas? pic.twitter.com/5i7ZBxx9rW
— Evan Osnos (@eosnos) April 6, 2019
Locked out
This means that the iPad will remain locked for more than 48 years. According to our calculations, it will be available in 2067. That is if the iPad will still be functional after all those years.
Apple devised this feature for security purposes. It automatically comes to play when someone repeatedly types the wrong password. The way it works, the more time you punch in an incorrect password, the longer the lock-out time.
The Twitter populace heard Osnos’ cry for help and they had a few suggestions for him. Some people thought it will be great for him to put it in a bag of rice. Others thought he should do a hard reset. One great idea shared was for him to connect it to the computer originally synced to his iTunes and let it sync. A funny comment was for his to just travel in time to unlock it.
Apple, however, suggests that he would need to restore the device to gain access to it again. This is most likely the way to go. It would be better to do this than to reboot the three-year-old child as suggested by another user.