catalina killed my MacBook pro

I suggest that you set an appointment with the nearest Apple Store Genius bar, or Apple Authorized Service Center. If you cannot boot into Recovery, then incredulously, something stepped on your 650 MB Recovery partition, or 200MB EFI partition.

@VikingOSX :

Yes absolutely true.. Apple and a buggy firmware update during a Catalina upgrade. User couldn't access the firmware on EFI. At least not "standard" non-MacOS-expert user. If necessary wrong or bad recovery partition doesn't avoid to boot from an external system.. and then rebuilt internal system.

Do we have any idea or estimate of the number of devices effected/infected/corrupted at this point? I can understand Apple remaining non-responsive until they have what they perceive to be the clearest picture they are going to get before taking action, but as of now it appears to be updating to Catalina is a lot like buying a lottery ticket except instead of winning millions of dollars I get a broken Mac that is no use in repairing unless it happens to be so new that it is under warranty.

Does anyone know if there is a liability clause when a user upgrades to an OSX system? Are we choosing to upgrade at our own risk? If so, then has Apple reasonably informed the average consumer/user that if any damage occurs to our devices that we are responsible?

I just find it very frustrating that I upgrade to Catalina at Apple’s strong suggestions that I do so and once my machine is harmed to the point of uselessness, Apple and others here act like I am so woefully ignorant of hardware/software engineering that I probably should not even own a Mac....

We have two other MacBooks (pro 2018 and Air 2018) and we are choosing not to upgrade until there is some assurance from some reliable sources that it is safe to do so, Apple and its representatives apparently are not a reliable source. If not the manufacturer then who should an average consumer trust?

In reading the tech press around the issue it appears there was chatter in October around the time of Catalina release but not much since then

Nice attempt at legalese but the proof is in the pudding. If this were truly a widespread issue that could be pinned on Apple don’t you think the lawyers would be on it by now? Think about that for a minute. Also notice that NONE of the big tech blogs are hammering away at this supposed problem. Think back about the various “-gates” that resulted in legal action against Apple and ask why your issue isn’t getting any traction, anywhere, except Google hits. Correlation does not imply causation as the saying goes.

As for software, there are not now and never have been warranties as to performance. Software licenses require the user to accept the product as is with no guarantee of usefulness. If that were not the case then every software bug would have a class action lawsuit attached to it.

Similar story to my own. I have a 2017 Mac Pro max'ed out configuration. Worked seamlessly for 21 months. Within 1 day of updating to Catalina it had a fried logic board according to Apple. Could be coincidence but I doubt it. It died while it was asleep over a 2 hrs period. I took it to a genius bar session where they told me it was $700 to repair because the logic board needed to be replaced. Lucky for me Apple replaced under warranty but I still think that this was Catalina related and not just a failure of the board as it would just not turn on. Looking at many of the posts there are a number of people resolving the problem by getting 3rd party companies to reflash the UEFI bios and the machine comes back to life. So for those it appears that it is definitely related to Catalinas UEFI upgrade failing. Unfortunately Apple does not offer to reflash the UEFI for you just a board swap which they then provide only 3 months warranty upon and its a repaired board.

For those that it may assist, who may want to try and restore the uEFI themselves from a failed catalina upgraded, here is a link for a place that sells a solderless chip plug on to restore the uEFI. You obviously need some technical skills to disassemble the MAC and connect but I have seen people report success with restoring failed Catalina upgrades in this manner. No responsibility here on myself as I have not tried to use this product and can not vouch for its success or failure. Its a far cheaper option if it works than replacing the logic board.

https://www.macunlocks.com/product/efi-card-instant-for-macbook-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air-solderless-efi-chip/

Same problem here. My iMac 4k late 2017, completly bricked when upgrading to Catalina. Took it to the Apple Store and testing it with no apparent problem they changed both HDD and SDD searching for the fix. The solution they are giving me now is changing the mother board. My mac is just two months out of warranty and there seems to be no other solution.

Standard answer - something wrong = 'replace logic board'

I would try Zapping the PRAM/NVRAM/SMC https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

Then Try Booting up in recovery mode