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Comment by TwoBit | Hacker News Reader

What is it about Helium that breaks the device? Is the device intended to contain a vacuum?

The microscopic oscillating part in the clock needs a vacuum. Having air around would dampen the vibrations too quickly because the mass is tiny, and the timing would vary with air pressure or humidity.

It sounds like microelectromechanical devices (like the quartz oscillators that keep time in electronics) are so small, and built to such fine tolerances, that helium atoms can literally, physically jam them like sand in a gearbox. That's what the article seems to be saying, anyway.

I guess they're fine under normal conditions because typical atmospheric molecules are actually too big to get inside? I'm not clear why the particular clock that Apple used is susceptible but other ones aren't. I guess they're sealed better.

Other devices use a solid-state quartz oscillator. This is a hollow mechanical frequency generator.

Did you read the article? It's all explained there.

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!

Hey, thanks! I had fun researching it.

You're welcome! I'm a sucker for a good meandering, low-stakes mystery.

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.

Are you joking?

This is a completely different thing than the UI widget that tells you the time and may freeze for any reason UI can freeze.

I was never criticizing the fact that time-reporting apps would fail at reporting the time if the hardware clock broke; I was criticizing the fact that the whole OS goes down, while the Mac Plus's didn't in the same circumstance.

clock as in "processor ticks", not clock as in "my watch". It's necessarily coupled, cause a processor can't function without it.

No it is the watch, AKA the RTC

From the article:

> Without a clock, the system stands still. The CPU flat out doesn’t work. The clock is literally the heartbeat of a modern device.

Plenty of processors run without an RTC, but they all need a stable clock source (some do generate it internally, but they still need it)

I don't really care what the article says. The CPU clock, or timers really, arel not affected by helium, because the timers are not MEMS devices. The MEMS device which is explicitly for keeping wall clock time, is what is affected by helium.

Helium molecules are small enough to cause issues with iOS devices' internal clock.

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