MacBook Air completely bricked after Catalina update

After a week in iSpot (authorised service provider) still nothing - status remains unchanged - 'awaiting diagnosis'. In the mean time with the help of other forums I was able to figure out possible alternative (less expensive solutions) on eBay you can purchase EFI chip already preprogrammed for around 12-15 USD for particular model (the thing is you need some soldering skills to exchange it on your board) alternatively you can even buy EFI card that is small chip you insert into SPI slot on your motherbord and it overrides the actual one (no soldering needed, but the price is 70USD roughly so not much less than the service previously mentioned). Anyway I will let the service still think for a while, and we shall see...

I have the same problem, seems the "upgrade" messed up the EFI chip on

the motherboard, the current viable solution is taking it to an

independent repair shop and let the change the chip (it costs 20 bucks

on ebay pre-configured). Apple asks for a full motherboard change(which

fixes the problem since the chip EFI in the new motherboard works) for

500 bucks, so not viable. Hope that helps.

Hey szymon114,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities! I can appreciate why you'd be concerned about the sudden appearance of this icon that's preventing you from booting up the MacBook, so I wanted to send this article your way: If a flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac - Apple Support. Let us know how that goes.

Cheers!

Today I decided to contact official Apple Poland service line first, after quite a lot of explanations and constant telling that I cannot do anything as there is no response to any key combination and that the computer is actually bricked and that this problem is not isolated but quite common while updating to Catalina, they directed my to the Authorised Service (iSpot) as there is no official service from Apple in Poland. The only thing I was able to negotiate for now was free of charge diagnosis of the problem (that might take them up to two weeks....) As this is my secondary machine, so I decided to wait. Obviously I already know the diagnosis - Broken EFI caused by faulty Catalina update - in fact I want to wait and see what is their solution to this problem and will they (or will not) want to charge me anything for this. Will keep you updated.

I was thinking if anyone can edit Wikipedia for example, it is maybe worth to make some reference to this Issue and those multiple posts here as a proof under Reception paragraph for macOS 10.15 Catalina - to make the world hear, if Apple doesn't want to hear.... yet

Apple is not taking responsability for this, quoted me a new board, independent repair shops says the EFI chip is completely corrupted and will need to be changed.

I highly recommend everyone to make this problem public as possible so aple can acknowledge it. I have a lot of friends with apple computers and there are 5 cases so far. Same problem as we have.

So as far as I can see I will need to pay for this repair.

This "Bricking after upgrading Catalina" is spreading like the plague, it happened to my 2014 MacBook Air and I have two other friends with MacBook Pro 2015 that have the same issue. No keys are recognized by the device and 5 minute after turning it on the flashing question mark folder. Everything points to be a BIOS-EFI firmware corruption by the catalina installer.

I promised update so there it is - today after full 6 weeks in Apple Authorised Service I received my Mac mini 2012 back. After initial diagnosis at the beginning of November I received bill for 1500 PLN (ie. ~400USD) for motherboard replacement - that I obviously rejected and at that point contacted / called again Apple Support line directly describing what the outcome of diagnosis is and how situation look like. Maybe I had luck but during that call I was directed (re-connected) to so called 'higher level support' where I was able to talk to actual Apple technician describing in details EFI problem caused by Catalina update process. To my surprise he promised to investigate this further and told me he will contact me later. The same day afternoon I got even more surprised when I received promised call. The guy told me he contacted the service and for this repair I was granted so called 'repair exception' meaning the iSpot authorised service will do the repair but Apple will cover all related costs. That left me speechless but very satisfied. Eventually my Mac mini 2012 got completely new motherboard (and hard drive) with Catalina clean installed for actual 0 PLN/USD. I can imagine that the service maybe was ordered to pass my original parts for further investigation to Apple (instead of just quickly refreshing EFI firmware) but at the end Apple Poland stood-up. It took looooots of time and a little bit of my effort not to give up and push further but in this case I appreciate Apple's approach.

I have the same problem too - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250743718 Diagnosis in service confirmed my suspicions as to broken EFI after update to Catalina on Mac mini 2012. Not willing to pay 600PLN (150 USD) - for not my mistake btw. based on your nick (szymon114) are you maybe from Poland as I am?

Which service exactly you went to?? 400 PLN is better than 600 PLN but still I would demand refund from Apple eventually for this as this is faulty Catalina update process obviously.

Did they reprogram your EFI? What exactly did they do during repair, do you know?

I have the same problem! MacBook Air early 2015. After upgrade it doesn't work, only folder with question mark. By the way, I can't restore my system from backup, and select recovery/safe mode, because system doesn't response for hotkeys, or maybe ignores it!

Thanks szymon114 for advice which is really helpful and good to know that there is this option. I am from Warsaw, so will be able to visit their location directly. I am still struggling to sacrifice 100 USD (400PLN) at this stage though, as this Mac mini was my secondary system, so I could wait a couple of days more - but there is no warranty that Apple will officially recognise this as a mass problem (which is a shame, as in this forum and based on what this service declared there is plenty of people with this problem right now) and propose free of charge service/repair programme or refund for already fixed equipment.

So sorry to hear of everyone's misery: my iMac is a 2017 model - it is totally dead and won't start after the Catalina update - the install stalled and left the machine crashing. I went in via safe/restore mode and tried backing up from my MacBook Air - a 5 hour wait.

No improvement.

Crash - black screen.

I think my very expensive iMac is now dead. I've hardly used it - was waiting to retire to start creating an animated film.

Misery. I'm shocked - this is not what I expect of Apple. A disaster.