Toddler Locks iPad For Over 25 Million Minutes Because, Of Course
Toddler makes too many password attempts and locks iPad basically for forever
Having kids is fun, right? So many special memories. So many wonderful and priceless moments. But also, so many things ruined forever, up to and including your expensive electronics. That’s what one dad found out the hard way after making the (all too common) parental error of letting his kid get anywhere near his locked tablet.
New Yorker writer and author Evan Osnos shared his frustrating It Happened To Me: Toddler Edition tale on Twitter. His child, probably through repeat attempts to jack into the thing, rendered their dad’s iPad disabled for, oh, no biggie, just 48 ENTIRE YEARS. Apparently the little nugget entered so many incorrect password attempts that the tablet now can’t be accessed until the year of our Lord 2068. Awesome. Hope he didn’t have anything pressing on there that he needed to get to in the next five decades.
That’s more than 25 million minutes, FYI. Osnos writes, “Uh, this looks fake but, alas, it’s our iPad today after 3-year-old tried (repeatedly) to unlock. Ideas?”
A quick Google tells us it will take a full restore of his iPad, and hope he’s been backing up to the Cloud, or else everything currently on that tablet is toast. Also, this method is still not a foolproof guarantee according to users who’ve tried it. “Have kids,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said.
Narrator: it’s often not very much fun.
When your kids aren’t locking you out of your electronics, they’re taking full advantage of your meager knowledge on how to stop them from accidentally spending a butt-ton of money on in-app purchases. In my nearly 12 years as a mom, I cannot even tell you how many of my parent friends have told me a story that goes something like, “OMG, little Ethan somehow charged $342 while playing with my phone.” Now, there are ways around those problems as technology has advanced, but not everyone is aware of those fail-safes, and hello, most parents have a brain like Swiss cheese and we just can’t remember shit sometimes, OK?
Hopefully this dad gets his iPad opened up again and hasn’t lost everything on it, and maybe he’s learned a very hard and annoying lesson about keeping important stuff up high or under literal lock and key. But chances are, the next time he’s distracted and his toddler is left to his own devices, he’ll once again try to get into his device. At least then he’ll know exactly how to fix it.
