catalina killed my MacBook pro

I’ve got an appointment with my local Apple Store next week.

Let’s see what they say.

The lady I spoke to from Apple Support would not guarantee that any repairs would be FOC.

Since I did nothing amiss, I’m not to happy about that.

Catalina broke my Mid 2014 MBP 15" with spontaneous shutdowns. The machine is going back to the Apple store a second time because the issue didn't happen for the techs the first time, but the random shutdowns, even in safe mode, continue to happen. Apple says the update may have exacerbated a latent hardware issue because the shutdowns happened even after wiping the hard drive multiple times and reinstalling Mojave three times. Apple keeps saying hardware is the fault, but the machine passed all of the hardware diagnostics.

Don't hold your breath!

I had the exact same problem with my iMac, which was only 4 years old and in perfect working order. I spend over 20 hours on the phone to Apple and in the Apple Store trying to solve the issue. It appear to be resurrected at some point, but I was sent back home with a dead iMac and now I don't have a computer any more. Apple's response: "it was my choice to upgrade to Catalina". Quite shocking.

Good luck anyway.

I'm not so sure. Seems like a huge co-incidence to me. I remember spending many hours talking to apply about sticky keys on my Macbook pro and they were adamant that this wasn't their problem as well. 2 years later they are replacing keyboards.

Same here! My MBP worked just fine till upgrade! Now I have flashing question mark folder and useless 2015 MBP.

Went to apple service , they said, ssd is ok. It cannot boot from external HD. In other words - dead! It is obviously Apple's fault, and, sooner or later, they will admit it!

Same here with an iMac 21.5" 2013. White Screen of Death! Went to an Apple Store, but no luck so far. No response at all, even target mode won't work! My guess is, that the update killed the EFI boot rom.

Keep your receipt - I suspect you may be in for a refund. Saying that an upgrade causes undue stress is horse sh&**&^ compared to video conversion for example. They think they can just bluff their way out of this problem - so very apple of them....

To RReinhardt93.

What’s your point?

Are you saying that hundreds, maybe thousands by now, have had the same hidden hardware problem despite having different machines from a spread of years?

Do you work for Apple and are trying to deflect the obvious to lessen their responsibility? Or an ostrich with his head buried in the sand?

Exactly the same with mine, wouldn’t boot at all then started but with a blank screen. Just persisted and after using the keystrokes before pressing on button to reset NVRAM and the power controller (sorry can’t remember what they are) it randomly started. Once logged in has been running extremely slowly. Spent hours messing about with it and now it’s slower than it was and then 4 times today hung up and needed to be restarted. Oh and this afternoon the display went and lost the toolbar had to mess about with that a couple tones and restart . . . Heavens above I’m considering getting a PC

After taking my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) 2.8Ghz, 16GB i7 to a very special shop in the East Village of NYC, the guy in the front desk instantly reset my sensors with a USB bootable dongle. The fans, which were running full blast, were fixed. It took him less than 10 minutes to fix the issue; and the Catalina was working. I immediately requested to return my OS back to Sierra and remove the two AFS partitions from my hard drive. In and out 20 minutes with no appointment. It was wonderful, personable. Meanwhile; I was thinking back at the conversation with someone at the Mac store - I was not told: “We don’t fix “Legacy” (end of life) hardware - (AKA == Please pay another 3.2K for new hardware for these special software features.) ...

So after day two of running High Sierra 10.13.6 with all my original (the 32 bit & 64bit apps one), there was no heat; and I was able to open as many Chrome browsers as I wanted at a cool 41c.  I don’t think I’ll be upgrading any Operating Systems on this MBP. I don’t need Apple TV, tablet sharing and want to keep my good old iTunes! Plus, its keyboard is much better and its visual experience is better than any newer crotch heaters thats currently sold in the Apple store. 

@Apple: Please fix the keyboards and make the hardware more interchangeable, so that we can stay in this ecosystem.  My original iPod, Mac mini, apple watch 1, and even older phones (and their hardware) are still working - Since I have not upgraded any EFI firmware to these devices... .. Please stop pushing buggy software, fauxing people's hardware, so that we won't have to keep purchasing new devices because its “LEGACY"! I’m hoping this MacBook will last another 7 years.

You would expect a responsible company who monitors these forums and who must get feedback from stores about the nature of problems being reports to pull the update from the app store until it's been thoroughly investigated.

Currently; newer system boardview schematics may not be available for service.. And some companies are intentionally make it difficult to replace a simple capacitor, or relay on whole system boards. We all know its the price we pay for all these expensive devices.

But think about it, If the wheels were welded directly on the axel of your car (and you could not remove it...) ; and you got a flat, would you replace the entire vehicle because the dealer is the only one that can repair it?

Thats basically what happens to the new logic boards, with welded on memory, wifi and hard drives encryptions on these newer laptops..

[Edited by Moderator]

That's a good and definitely the cheapest solution you @gandjafuzz mentioned, my only concern is from where to get the flash dump for my Mac mini 2012 as I have got only one. Any site maybe where I can find this to download or maybe I can extract correct file directly from Mac installer package?

@Macbook Pro users in this forum who experienced slow performance issues, heat and internal fans on full blast. -- I do not believe there was a need to upgrade the logic board since re-flashing (efi) back to the previous version of MacOS 12.12 Sierra & then upgrading to 10.13/High Sierra. My laptop has been performing well and have not had any issues.

Mojave slowed my system down tremendously with random reboots and heat. Catalina sent my laptop device over the edge. @Apple support. Please close my ticket. I do not plan to upgrade to Catalina/10.15 - ... Waiting for the new 16" model if they release it. ;) thanks.

For those people who have had their computer killed by the Catalina Upgrade (I mean totally unresponsive) - can you let me know if you have previously had an antivirus or 3rd party firewall installed during the upgrade ? Also for the later models has anyone had problems with a T2 fitted machine when they had disabled the T2 security or enabled usb boot before the upgrade ?

I'm still on Mojave and I've no intention in playing Russian Roulette with my kit until we know what's causing these problems. I'm not even slightly convinced that it's a coincidental hardware failure.

Dave