> "It doesn't surprise me that a massive, powerful, super-conducting electromagnet is capable of doing this. What surprises me is that it is only effecting Apple products"
May I suggest an hypothesis (I would be happy to hear from other people whether this might make sense. I didn't see this possibility mentioned by anyone on the Reddit page) : of course Apple is very secretive about their implementation details, yet as far as I know they are the only consumer brand who implemented Ultra Wide Band at large scale (in a quite innovative way, they can be praised for that !). See https://developer.apple.com/nearby-interaction/
I suspect that UWB implies having an RF receiver and antenna which are "wide open" in terms of frequency selectivity, which means that in the event of a strong RF pulse in the spurious domain, more energy might enter in the device compared to other brands. Maybe that's an explanation why Apple devices (and only those) were burned by an EMP ?
Relevant video (2018, Applied Science) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzWaVvB908
We are constantly venting helium into the lab where I work… it hasn’t killed any iPhones as far as I know.
This really needs a year tag and a explanation of the cause.
Spoiler: Helium leak.
How can you be sure your phone stays helium-tight if you are allowed to change the battery yourself?
It’s going to be expensive to resolve. How far from the mri were the disabled devices, and was there reasonable airflow to those locations? Thinking about it, there was an emi spike starting things up (missing brass?), there’s a lot of magnetic field (things like pens and keys can go mobile) and the aforementioned helium leak. Sensitive antennas and the like won’t like the emi or magnetism, and if there are also components sensitive to He…
I once screwed with a tube colour tv using a magnet and the colours were distorted in that area of the screen until I unplugged the tv and left it for a few days. Induced currents from the magnetic field or changes in the electric or magnetic fields might not be all that good for devices that run on milliamperes or less.
And somebody has to pony up a bunch of iOS devices and some He to run blind controlled experiments. I suspect that “operating in an area that could pull fillings out of teeth” voids their warranty.