3-Year-Old Locks Dad’s iPad for 25 Million Minutes, or 48.5 Years

A man uses an Apple iPad tablet. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

A father in Washington was locked out of his iPad for near half a century after his toddler tried accessing his device with the wrong passcode.

“Uh, this looks fake but, alas, it’s our iPad today after 3-year-old tried (repeatedly) to unlock,” New Yorker magazine writer Evan Osnos wrote on April 6.

His post was accompanied by a plea for help, “Ideas?” and a screenshot that showed the device being disabled for 25,536,442 minutes, or 48.58 years, before Osnos could make an attempt to key in his passcode. This means he will have to wait until late 2067 to use his device.

Apple devices like iPhones and iPads have a security feature that disables the device for an amount of time, which increases every time a user inputs the wrong password. The period of time the device is locked begins short but becomes longer with more failed attempts, eventually reaching lifetime proportions.

Many social media users sent the baffled dad funny replies, while others tried to be helpful by sending him solutions.

“Time travel seems to be your best bet,” one user wrote.

“Put it in a museum. 47 years from now someone can unlock it to see what computing used to be like,” another said.

“Do you still have the receipt for your 3-year-old?” another user wrote in jest.

On April 8, Osnos told New York Daily News that he was still locked out. He said, “It’s down a few hundred minutes from yesterday, but it looks like we’ve still got 25 million minutes to go.”

Similar Cases

This is not the first time a toddler had locked their parents out of their devices.

Last year, a 2-year-old boy got his hands on his mother’s iPhone after she stepped out to run an errand and left the phone at home.

When she returned, her phone was locked for 25,113,676 minutes—about 47 years and nine months.

“I couldn’t really wait for 47 years and tell my grandchild it was your father’s mistake,” the mother, who was identified as Miss Lu from Shanghai, China, according to the South China Morning Post.

Lu took the phone to an Apple store, but the clerk told her the phone would need a factory reset, which would wipe all data on it. The mother was hesitant as she had important information on the phone, like photos, correspondence, and contacts.

According to Apple, users who are unable to wait out the lock times will need to remove their passcode—which would erase data from the device—and perform a restore using iTunes or other suggested methods.

The Epoch Times Reporter Petr Svab contributed to this report.