10.15 Catalina....bricked my Mid 2014 13" Macbook Pro? Blinking file icon

I had the same issue, after Catalina, my MacBook Pro 2015 died... I didn't have any backup, and I've lost all of my research (which is fomented by the government) I`ve lost months of hard work.

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You have critical data on your computer which is not being backed up. Not a very smart thing to do. You might try file recovery software to see what it can recover or you can send it out to a recovery service. Either of these methods will cost you and probably fail to recover everything.

It is always suggested that before undertaking anything with the possibility of data lose like an upgrade that the first step should be a backup.

I really agree, but when you pay a ton of money on a computer (mainly here on Brazil) you don't expect that an official update will brick your device. MacBooks are known by being reliable computers, not by bricking after a mere update.

"I am pretty unhappy with the Genius Bar explanation is that the logic board and or SSD were already faulty and this only became symptomatic when “stressed” by the operating system upgrade. "

The Genius Bar told you correctly. When a SSD or HDD is failing you won't know it until you perform a full new OS install. It's not the same as installing something like Photoshop. I've had this happen to me in the past. Tried installing the latest OS only for my Mac to fail. Apple had to replace the HDD and everything has been fine since then. OS's can't brick a system unless the install failed or it was improperly installed by the user.

This is funny, then how come I out my hard drive in another computer and it booted normally? Don't be fooled, Catalina is halting/crashing when updating the EFI leaving it corrupted. I got my laptop working again today.

"Don't be fooled, Catalina is halting/crashing when updating the EFI leaving it corrupted."

I'm not fooled by anything. I have a 2018 MBP which I just installed Catalina. It's working perfectly. What does that tell you? Perhaps your setup had some corrupt files that didn't work with Catalina. You can't ignore others that are not having issues simply because you and a few others do. With this being the case then you have to realize that the people having problems either have a setup with corrupt or incompatible files or it's hardware failure. Why would mine and many others be working fine? Also please refrain from insults. I'm not anybody's fool.

"Everyone who is having issues seems to own a 2012-2015 Apple computer. "

Obviously you're wrong. Take a look at the post before mine. Person claims to have an issue with a 2017 MBP. This is a hardware failure. An OS can't damage the system and won't appear bricked unless the install failed or the person didn't take proper steps with the install. I've been on Mac for the past 24 years and never had an install problem.

"You should not equate your experiences to be the only ones that exist. "

Oh the irony! That's exactly what you're doing. People like me that don't exhibit problems with the Catalina install should definitely post so others know the issue is isolated and not widespread. I suppose you prefer for me to keep quiet so that it only looks like everybody is having problems only? SMH.

" but that doesn't mean the ones who are having problems are making it all up. "

And where did I state that people were making up problems? Show me! Go ahead I'm waiting. I said that an OS cannot cause hardware failure and the only reason there would be issues is due to the user's setup as far as select softwares (or corrupt ones) they have installed that are not compatible with Catalina which are generally 32bit apps. I also stated that the install may have been done incorrectly or there was a interruption during the install which makes the system appear to be bricked.

Look, I know most of you here just want to lay the blame on Apple so you can make it look widespread to get a free repair if the solution ends in hardware failure. This is generally what users with new accounts do on this forum as they refuse to accept any responsibility that the problem could somehow be the fault of their own. Very ridiculous.

Catalina update process actually involves EFI update - the chip firmware that is soldered to the motherboard (so is considered hardware). I have independent service expertise that my EFI was corrupted - and this happened exactly while updating from Mojave to Catalina (as many of us here). Believe me I am Mac user from 2006 and have some decent knowledge of what the software compatibility issue is vs. hardware related problem caused by firmware update initiated by the software update process.

"and this happened exactly while updating from Mojave to Catalina (as many of us here)."

And what would you say about the rest of who didn't have an issue with the Catalina install like me? I mean, we all are using Mac hardware right? We're all installing Catalina right? Then please explain it to me. I would love to hear your explanation of why many of us had great success with installing Catalina. And please don't reply with ignorance saying we are lucky. That's a copout reply.

"Believe me I am Mac user from 2006 and have some decent knowledge of what the software compatibility issue is vs. hardware related problem caused by firmware update initiated by the software update process."

And I'm a dedicated Mac user of 24 years with a degree in computer science. Are we now measuring who's more experienced with computers? Yours and other's issues are isolated. If you think Apple didn't test Catalina enough to put it out for public install then explain to me why many people have had perfect success installing it? I frequent other forums and only a handful of people are complaining while many others like me are having great success.

There's gotta be a line drawn in terms of blaming the OS and not taking into account your own hardware. Hopefully your issue gets resolved.

DPJ, again I just want to state facts in my final replay please note following:

1) Same models differ at the elementary components level, some individual parts (and there is plenty of them in any computer device) are manufactured differently during production cycle, sometimes even manufactured by different providers. Final configuration even identical on the paper can be different at the low hardware level between Day 1 and Day 1+1. Testing never covers 100% population. So based on that, yes I even considered myself partially lucky - because this failure caused by faulty (not enough tested) Catalina update happened on my secondary system, and my primary one is fine.

2) Testing is as good as it gets (never covers 100% as noted above). If you believe that everything is always tested for macOS before going public please note quite meaningful example quite recent from Mac world: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/macos-bug-lets-you-log-in-as-admin-with-no-password-required/ This means nothing more than the test were not sufficient (maybe not designed to cover as much as possible) to give sufficient confidence that nothing major will come out (because at some point you always need to stop testing). EFI corruption caused by software update is bricking hardware - so again yes, I think it is major as requires sophisticated service intervention to fix and I definitely would say not enough was sufficiently tested here (or testing stopped to soon).

End-users (no matter how experienced or not) cannot be blamed at any of the above. If not them than what else if not this particular OS update?

The EFI is a partition on the boot drive. That partition can be fixed by erasing and re-installing.

I expect some are using that term (EFI) when they mean to say Boot ROM or Firmware store, a persistent store (does not forget when the power is off) on the mainboard that stores the firmware in a few chips. It is almost the same as a Read-Only Memory (ROM), except that it can be re-written a small number of times, like a flash memory. This is sometimes referred to as the Boot ROM, and code will be executed directly from it when starting up.

On older Macs, a Firmware error would preclude booting and the power indicator would flash a small numeric code indicating firmware checksum error. I honestly do not know if that is still the case, or whether this has changed.

Suppose a certain bit is a Zero-bit for the Mojave firmware. If that bit failed in a way that left it stuck at Zero, the firmware store would pass all tests and work just fine under Mojave. That bit does not have to change state, it just has to remember its setting, and a failed bit stuck at Zero is just as good a Zero as a working bit set deliberately to Zero.

If there later needs to be a 1-bit in that position for the Catalina Firmware, the firmware update would fail, and there is no graceful way to recover. Apple does not have a graceful way to return to an older version of firmware, either.

So this may indeed be a Hardware failure. It may have occurred a long time ago or during the update, there is no way to know.