It doesn't just force a reboot, it forces a never-ending loop of reboots, rebooting each time you reboot it.

> The result is a device that’s soft-bricked, requiring a device erase and restore from backup.

Requiring a device erase isn't a full brick, no, but it's still pretty serious.

> Requiring a device erase isn't a full brick, no, but it's still pretty serious.

He totally murdered that guy!

What? Why would you say murdered, he only gave him a black eye?

I know, but that's still pretty serious.

No, the _single line_ part forces a single reboot. The never-ending loop requires setting up a widget, so that's more than one line.

I think you skimmed too fast. Widgets, allegedly, are eagerly evaluated when an app is opened, and the system keeps trying failed attempts:

> After restarting, as soon as SpringBoard was initialized, the extension would be woken up by the system, since it had failed to produce any widget entries before, which would then start the process all over again.

The article claims that they had to manually cause the widget to crash so that the result doesn't get cached, right? So that's at least one line to trigger the reboot, one line (likely more) to register as a widget, and one to crash it.

The single line part also requires you first set up an app to execute that code as well.