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Comment by oddevan

7 years ago

TL;DR: it breaks the oscillator that keeps time on the device. This breaks the clock and eventually has a cascading effect on the system.

The article is pretty straightforward and engaging; it's worth a read!

Oh wow, so the clock is unnecessarily coupled to the other systems?

  • Tons of events are tied to the real-time clock. For example if the interface code wants to know how fast you're dragging your finger across the screen, it divides the distance between digitizer samples by the elapsed time. Or to know if a "tap" is a "long press", it has to know how long it was. All kinds of stuff depends on that clock.

    • I remember the double-click (which is time-dependent) still working on my Mac Plus when the clock was stuck at midnight. It also didn't crash the OS and make the computer turn off.

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