catalina killed my MacBook pro

I am in the U.S.A. Purchased the MBAir 2017 online through Apple store while living in Washington state. my device was out of warranty by 9 months at time of upgrade. My issue occurred immediately after updating to Catalina, a coincidence, yes, a corollary, but one that appears to be moving towards causation as more and more devices become corrupted. Perhaps there are multiple outcomes occurring with individual consumers but a significant number of bad outcomes appear to be coalescing around a logicboard and EFI issue/s ?

i do not pretend to know what happened, but I do think very unreasonable that I should be required to invest $500 or more US dollars to even get an idea of what happened when I followed Apple’s strong suggestion that I upgrade.

That's awful - if you need your laptop for work your in big trouble. I've had worryingly vague repair times quoted even when applecare is involved. It makes a mockery of the "peace of mind" reason for going down the apple route. Of course they shot themselves in the foot by making the units so "unrepairable" When my 2017 keyboard developed the infamous fault I was told 2-3 weeks so in the end I just got a wireless keyboard instead. After about 18 months of emails / phone calls and the law suite they finally just agreed to replace the entire laptop. I'm using Mojave at the moment on my main work laptop and I don't intend to upgrade until they have admitted to and addressed the problem or the machine has been replaced with a newer model so that I have a hot spare. I am under contract to provide 24x7 support for applications so I simply cannot be without a machine. When I think that I could purchase 2 or more similarly spec'd windows laptops for the same price it makes you very depressed. I have so much software invested in MacOS I cannot jump platforms now. I've no doubt the truth will come out but it's far too soon for them to admit anything. If all these faults are being logged as hardware faults it will take some time for their reporting system to determine the relationship between catalina and a spike in motherboard replacements.

There are a lot of full time apple fans on these forums who are also in denial mode and would have you believe that your just unlucky that your motherboard decided to expire at the same time as the OS was updated. It's really not rocket science to understand the problem. If firmware update component does not include some CRC error checking when writing to the EPROM then it's likely to encounter problems from time to time. Not good.

Dave

You are right. I have my iMac 5k from end of 2014 dead by a software upgrade. A machine that was working perfectly until Mojave.

I got a new EFI chip from Mac unlocks but can’t find someone able to replace it in France cause the iMac EFI chip is soldered on the motherboard.

It is a shame that Apple take so long to recognize such a problem. As a huge Apple product consumer, I feel a lot of regret. They are failing on their best clients and ambassadors....

I now have a MacBook Air (My sons) that this has happened to and I'm disgusted that Apple are not recognising it. I am going to try to get them to repair it. Surely, Apple know that this is happening and should be able to do some type of EFI transplant? Back in the day a trusty RS232 port would suffice, but now we have to suffer.

I'll be contacting them tomorrow to see if I get anywhere and following all these threads closely!

[Edited by Moderator]

I wrote about possible ways to fix MacBook bricked by Catalina, including forcing Apple to do it for free (I succeeded but I pressed really strong), having it done at unofficial shop or doing it yourself. See here: https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/612997/Catalina+Bricked+my+Mac.+Now+What

I have been in a DM chat with Apple support on twitter and they just refuse to accept its their fault. This is an absolute joke and honestly a disgrace. I’m now faced with either scrapping a perfectly good machine, paying Apple £500 or paying for an eeprom flasher for £50, which is the option I am taking I think.

if I buy one and I use it, I will video myself fixing it and post it everywhere I can while copying Apple support in to show them what imbeciles they are.

Will wait for your success. Appears many others have gone this path and restored the machine to working order without replacing the logic board. Please tell us what programmer you purchase and your experience.

Well we agree the backup disk is beyond the point, which is that apparently 101 people (see me toos) have had 3,4,5,6 year old Macs way out of warranty that broke while upgrading.

Multi millions didnt.

I had a 3 year old Mac had a GPU burned out. No warranty, no Apple care.

Poor me. Sold it for scrap on Ebay, bought another, moved on.

Stuff breaks by design, that is the problematic behavior your apology seeks to cover. Your resale/salvage benefit argument is not enough to offset the carbon emissions or child labor practices in mining for precious metals necessary to cover the cost of overconsumption built into the inefficient model you support, a model designed to appease shareholders and not in the interest of the consumers who are harmed.

Back to my original point Peter, your apologies for Apple is literally killing the planet.

Now, Apple’s apparently admitted, according to the previous post’s claim, firmware issue associated with Catalina has caused harm to some number of devices. Why doesn’t Apple simply admit that an apparently infinitesimally small number of affected machines according to you, 101 wasn’t it and let us all move on.? Why shouldn’t Apple follow your salvage/repair model and repair the machines they broke with their software?

Again, the busines

I sent off to a 3rd party that supplied a SAM chip but it didn’t work... so it’s either back to Apple to pay for a new Logic board that is more expensive than the machine or sell it for parts. Very disappointing. But what can you do? My PowerBook G4 from 2004 is still going strong... I guess you win some you lose some...

You misunderstand my point.

I don't apologise for a company that makes Macbooks so thin they cant be repaired or modified. I don't apologise for designs that give you a soldered in SSD, one port and no CD slot . I will have to think twice about what to get next if my 2012 Macbook finally gives up the ghost. It has already outlived every windoze laptop I've owned

But I won't start a class action if it eventually breaks.

Stuff breaks.

Global warming isn't caused by Apple but by a rise from 2.6 billion to 7 billion population in my lifetime.

Quit breathing folks.

“Stuff breaks” is not what apparently happened here to an as yet unknown number of devices. Stuff broke immediately or nearly immediately after consumers followed Apple’s advice and upgraded to Catalina. Given what appears to be a small number of devices, why shouldn’t Apple stand behind its product and offer to investigate, find the cause, and offer to repair devices found to show signs of harm because of the upgrade, instead of gaslighting consumers? Doing so would be a much more ecologically conscious business practice.

My MacBook Pro 2017 w/ Touch Bar 13” has also been killed by Catalina.

Apple won’t give me a report even to give their OPINION on whether the logic board was faulty since day 1. I need this to claim my consumer rights since I’m out of warranty.

plus, given that it’s happening to so many different models leads me to believe that this is a software issue???

I have the same problem, May macbook pro late 2013.

First I I have update the catalina in my Imac and everything work fine, then I update the macbook pro, the computer have make Full install of the catalina, then computer restart, and not work anymore, I only Saw a folder with flashing question Mark. In Portugal I do not have official Apple assistance, only authorized agents. I have already taken the computer with an agent who says that the efi matherboard is damaged. And now Apple ??? My computer is no longer under warranty. This macbook was completely new. A matherboard costs more than 600 US dollars. And now??

Apple is charging 450 saying that the logic boards are corrupt when in fact that is not the case. Take your makebook to ubreakifix and they will do a fresh OS install. The Apple store tried this but was unsuccessful. It seems like Apple does not want to fix product, they prefer you buy brand new or charge crazy prices to fix...