"BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header)" — Catalina freezing all the time!

You've spent a lot more than my $18,000 then. For that amount of money, I've had a 27" 2015 iMac with image burn on screen after 10 seconds of a still image. Given the shaft for that only owning machine for 6 months, even though it's a reported issue. 2016 macbook pro - 4 replacement top halves for keys that kept falling out for no reason, followed by a battery expansion 1.5 years after owning. 2011 macbook - battery expansion after a year that cracked logic board. Replaced, but then suffered AMD gpu failure with apple replacing logicboard for affected users in 2015, so 4 years of a machine that didn't turn on and was outdated when it finally did. And of course, is my current macbook pro 2019 16" fully specced and I'm on my 3rd replacement two months after purchase. On top of the software based Bad Magic panics from T2 sleep, the 2019 appear to have some sort of hardware fault. So when I eventually get my replacement that isn't faulty, I'm still dealing with Bad Magic! anyway...I mean seriously...

Orcoonx, I understand your frustration, but how many repairs a year do you do?

Our team is certified for repairs and have I've been processing repairs on Macs since 2003. Ive replaced logic boards on 2018, 2019, MacBook Pro's over and over (as well as topcases{keyboard/batterys}, displays...etc).

Let me ask you, have you disabled SIP and turned off the security features on your iMac Pro? I ask since the T2 chip seems to flag the "Bridge" error but even with all T2 security pieces disabled the Bad Magic error continues to occur for our 2018 and 2019 MacBook Pros (including multiple 16" Models all specced out). (I have no iMac's with T2 chips so I cannot test my theories on them unfortunately).

My place of employment has thousands of devices that our team works with and we probably see more issues in an hour than you do in a year on your 2 or 3 machines. I'm not trying to escalate an argument, but just stating that my base data set has a wider range of info.

If you see the error logs in console, the Bridge error actually has a report to send that includes more details of whats happening including processes running at the time, whereas the BAD MAGIC has nothing else to report.

They maybe related but they may be separate issues altogether. I can tell you though that replacing logic boards never resolved either issue and if Apple isn't creating revised versions of the hardware to solve this (which they have in the past for many issues), then the answer is in modifying the software in how it talks to the hardware. But again my (educated) guess is that they have not discovered a way to do this or have enough data to actually process a strategy.

I also make it a habit to send the log file and include everything in the notes that I have connected to our computers (include contact info) so that maybe I can help them get to the bottom of these issues.

I might suggest if you are this upset and frustrated to write Tim Cook about it. His email is pretty well documented online, and he (and his team) do seem very responsive.

I've escalated this as much as I can and I agree, the end users (including myself) should not have to deal with it especially for as long as its been. My personal 2018 model has already had an expanding battery (which I believe is a thermal issue from keeping the machine closed and connected to 2 displays all the time), a logic board replacement due to the bridge error and continues to restart with BAD MAGIC, but only when connected to a Belkin thunderbolt 3 dock and 2 thunderbolt LG displays and quite randomly not only from waking on sleep.

I would also say if anyone does open a ticket with Apple to reference this thread which is now 20 pages deep. Interestingly enough since 10.15.3 it seems to be happening less, but that is more subjective than anything else.

I set up my mac so that it could dual boot to two different versions if macOS so that if one is bugged, I can recover it with the other version(which I only update it when I know the update is stable).

edit: I can provide instructions if needed... note when I did this I was logged in as root

Quite a few actually, I run an IT business myself that looks after quite a few office environments. I do linux, mac & windows setups.

I’ve already had a lot of clients look to switch from Mac to windows purely because of bad magic & a really low quality.

Battery expansions and all sorts of other hardware burning out way before expected is basically what I am seeing will happen with a lot of mac(books) for this latest generation due to extremely inefficient running of the system and rushed updates.

How can they be selling stuff in this state, my perspective before was to show that as a consumer, I can throw $18,000 at this company and have literally every computing device faulty out the box.

Why can’t macs be treated differently than the iOS supply chain? Stability over features.

From the business perspective, this is destroying a lot of smaller businesses who fully invested in the Apple ecosystem. I’m working in some environments now where the network has had to be redone to allow for both macs and windows machines to run efficiently during a 2-3 year phase out of macs for windows. A creative industries business. The 2-3 year time frame because they’ve been burnt financially buying over 100k worth of 2018 & newer Apple computers that won’t stay on with things plugged in.

I’ve tried all sorts of macOS setups, cutting back most features like T2/SIP to no avail.

Interestingly in my time digging for what’s wrong I’ve found an interesting piece of info - the power and boot process usually taken care of by the main cpu (intel in this case) is being routed to the T2 chip. This is a future move for T2 + ARM and Intel couldn’t care less about supporting it since it basically means they’re out of Apple systems once Apple perfect the T2 boot process with ARM. That should be done in labs. We aren’t testers. My $7000 MacBook shouldn’t be an “in between” in engineering. All intel, or T2 + ARM. Clearly it’s not something to be putting out in the real world.

I can type a 20+ character password faster than the fingerprint scan works, yet another T2 based feature that doesn’t really work that well.

gabefromprinceton,

I have written everything you mentioned above on seperate occasions on this forum, please do check on it.

There is no need to be working on such a facility to make guesses. “Educated or not” a guess is a guess.

In our office we spent over 1200 hours over the SAME units which have the T2 issue. We tried every possible peripheral situation. I can even replicate the error on will. I do not think you have such a time frame for individual units in your crowded working environment.

Instead of arguing over theories, we should unite over the fact that, we are paying our hard earned money, but getting a very bad support in return. I have lost a lot in terms of reputation and money in my business because they took the issue lightly and acted so slow on it.

They took so long to replace the units. I got to replace my imac pro in January 2020. And my macbook pro replacement is still in backorder due to arrive in March 2020. Both of them had I bought in August 2018.

Writing to Tim Cook paid me off nothing, rather I had to replicate the error at the genius bar and fought with the support over the several months to get what I deserved in the first place which is

a reliable working unit...

@orcoonx

So how do you replicate it? Since disabling graphics card switching I have zero issues with Bad Magic crashes with HyperDrive USB-C hub or my Trust USB-C hub or without them whereas they used to happen at random.

If there is a possibility to replicate it please advise so I can get my unit replaced before it Bad Magics again.

@gabefromprinceton It can’t be related to USB-C/Thunderbolt peripherals if I experienced crashes without any peripherals plugged in. Furthermore, since disabling graphics switching, I can use my HyperDrive USb-C and Trust USB-C hubs without issue... so clearly there is something else at foot.

@RhythmDriver

IN MY CASE, for both of the macs I had, I replicated the bad magic panic. Here is how:

As I explained earlier on these discussion pages, you need to get yourself an HDD with corrupt files on it (You know the files back in the old times where the hdd head kept trying to read the file over and over again but couldn”t due to a bad sector) Old style spinning disks which are dated are the ones to go. You probably have one, or get yourself a magnet and create one.

I took them my macbook 2011 and my 2018 imac pro and my 2018 macbook pro. I also brought my WD thunderbolt 2 enclosure with the thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter ( MMEL2ZM/A) And a regular usb 2.0 3.5” enclosure... With my macbook 2011, while transferring the corrupt files, it just pops up a dialogue box saying such and such files are corrupt and unreadable. But the faulty macs just restart with fans on giving the bad magic error. The genius bar people got amazed, and wrote a report right away. But even so, it took me many months to get Apple to replace them. They made me carry everything again and again until they saw that replacement is the way to go.

For your ease you can use the rsync terminal command to locate and find the corrupt files. With rsync you can see the name of the corrupted file before it bad magix.

I suggest you plug one or two usb-c or hdmi screens, plus an external drive, start some web streaming, put on sleep mode and wake up. Do that a couple of time. That should be enough to stress test your unit if you suffer from the Bad Magic instability.

On the last 20 pages a lot of people believed that reseting SMC and PRAM, changing the graphic card switching pref or reinstalling Catalina OS fresh was enough, they all came back after a few weeks.

I wanted to share my experience of this because it ****** me off so much.

So, I bought a new MacBook Air (2019 model), stoked new fresh unit latest specs, apple never has problems.

4 charges in I have the freeze, restart and BAD MAGIC error report happening EVERY SINGLE TIME I TRY TO USE MY DEVICE.

So frustrating, Apple products never have a problem.

I contacted Apple Support on Twitter, they instructed me to use the website to resolve the problem.

The website instructed me to take it to the nearest OFFICIAL device support service place.

Did that.

Two weeks later they inform me that the logic board AND the finger print thing has been replaced.

They replaced the logic board and fingerprint thing.

I am 3 charges in and it and my device is operating like the product I originally purchased.

Although I am ****** that I had to go through that, my device has a 1 year warranty and it was fixed and it now working.

If you are suffering from the BAD MAGIC error report just take it to an OFFICIAL APPLE PRODUCT PLACE.

Hope that helps :)

Found this interesting—refurbished 16" MacBook Pro now being sold. Many comments in regards to "that was quick/must have had problems". Not sure what the normal turnaround time would be from a new model being released to it showing up as refurbished.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-begins-selling-certified-refurbished-16-inch-macbook-pro-models.2223367/

From my perspective as a business owner relying wholly on my new 16" Pro, I still can't see going through the entire return process and losing days of production only to receive a new unit with the same issues.

I'm having the same problem "BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header), no macOS panic log available"

I want to get clear solution on this ..

im using Mac Pro 2018 256gb 8gbRAM

apple can you help us .

I have the same situation on 10.15.1, but I have seen it before Catalina Mac OS. My MacBook Pro 2019 15" 16GB RAM, i7 6-core 2.6GHz.

Error after freeze and restart:

BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header), no macOS panic log available

Apple, com'on !!!

I had this very same problem.

I'd had enough so took it to the nearest official Apple Support place after consulting them on Twitter.

I have the 2019 MacBook Air so it is still under the 1 year warranty period (I'd only charged it like 4 times before this issue started happening).

They ended up replacing the logic board and the finger print thing.

Now it works like it should!

I had the same problem but further more my screen went the upper or lower part black and froze.

They replaced my logic board and the touch bar also, but the bug came back 2 weeks after replacement.

So I set up a new appointment in the apple store hope they will replace my Mac Book Pro 15" 2018.