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

My Apple Story:

2011, buy Macbook Pro 17", enjoy 8 years of relative computing ease.

2019, buy Macbook Pro 16".

2019, regret paying $4000+ to this dumpster fire of a hardware/software company.

Seriously - ditch the touchbar, or you can count me officially in the camp of "not buying/recommending a mac again"

Lost a few days work from a corrupted docker container because Apple engineers thought they'd have a hoot by coding a useless "BAD MAGIC!" error when their useless new touchbar decided to sh** the bed. Thanks for the insult to our intelligence, couldn't even be bothered to code a proper error message I guess...

I seriously don't have time for this.

Step 1. remove the touchbar, it was a failure then, now, and into the future

Step 2. don't release another OS until you have your daisies in a line with external display/sleep issues - this pain is constant. I can't use half my dongles because the OS will simply refuse to remember that it's a computer in the first place.

"I'd be a Mac poweruser.... if the thing would stay on for more than three days at a time"

So done with this.

Exact same issue here. Someone mentioned that safari is the one causing the issue... gonna try using chrome and see whether it solves the problem. In addition I have disabled secure boot & SIP, hopefully it helps! I am wondering whether dual external monitor is the cause here... as I am using my MacBook in clamshell mode connected to two 4K monitor. Don't remember experiencing this issue when it was just one external monitor, but the freezing and crashing seems to happen after I added the 2nd external monitor.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a consistency with what is causing mine to crash. Today i had my computer re-imaged but it was to the current version of MacOS (10.15.3) and I logged in and it froze/restarted while I was in the initial setup.

My computer does not have any issues while connected to my external monitor. I am going to test with other external devices this weekend. Going to have to replace mine unfortunately. Having a laptop that doesn't work unless connected to a external monitor defeats the purpose of having a portable computer.

I've started having this issue today, two times this morning.

10.15.3 (19D76)

MacBook Pro (15 pulgadas, 2019)

2,3 GHz Intel Core i9 de 8 núcleos

32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

I use external monitor, keyboard sound device for teleconferencing and my iPhone X plugged from time to time to be charged/backup

I tried turning off SIP and secure boot... both doesn't help, problem still happening. Now I'm trying out using chrome instead of safari... shall see how it goes. Eventually I might send in for a replacement, but can't do it now as I need it to work.

After over a month of stability, i had a random Bad Magic crash after wakeup... and now it’s fine. Interesting thing happened though... I disabled bluetooth on my MBP because I don’t use any bluetooth devices and the first few times after waking up from a deep sleep, I got an error that no bluetooth keyboard/pointer device found (paraphrase) After a while it seemed to clue in that the keyboard and trackpad were part of the device and it went on its merry way. The next couple of times that it woke out of hibernation it did the same thing and now it seems to be okay?

Very, very strange...

I am not sure if this is the best option. I mean after paying EUR2000 for a macbook pro, I don't want to compromise. I would just take a replacement. I am not looking for workarounds.

I took a replacement and works flawless now. Apple knows about these bad batch of devices. They just don't want to accept it or do a public recall. They will repair it for you or give you a replacement.

Mr Hogan, I have been getting this since High Sierra. If there was something to be done on the software side, they would have done it since then. Please have it replaced if you can, while you can.

PS : Got two units changed. No problems with 1 of them. Other is coming from China. I suspect they are trying to contaminate me with Corona virus.

Possible Fix/Work Around!

I have the same issue. My MBP 16 inch works completely fine on its own (no monitors plugged in), but when I connect any of my monitors (I have three) then eventually it crashes. I have spoke with phone support and performed all the diagnostics and resets they asked me to do and none of them worked. I am running bootcamp as well and noticed that my computer does not crash when using windows through bootcamp exempt on occasion when running games, but it doesn't happen often. On MacOS it has happened on every session when connected to external monitors.

I am not sure if this is the case, but I figured it might be graphics related through the software automatic graphics switching since bootcamp does not have this feature and seems to run fine. So I disabled this in system preferences>energy saver and unchecked the box next to Automatic graphics switching. So far I have been primarily using MacOS to see if it worked and so far NO CRASHES!! It has only been a few days but I could have never gone this long before.

Anyway, maybe you can try this and see if it works for you. I plan on taking my mac in to see if they will replace it as this should not be an issue for the price/it is marketed as a desktop replacement, but I figured I would post this for anyone not able to get there laptop replaced or repaired that maybe this fix will work for them as well.

This is EXACTLY what happened to me just now, except that I only have an old 1920 x 1080 monitor with an HDMI-to-USBC adapter. The 16" laptop froze when I connected the monitor. When I disconnected the monitor, I heard the fans run super fast for a very short moment, then the laptop power was off. Upon powering back up I got some BAD MAGIC!

In general, I have experienced weird glitches involving the external monitor. I think this is the first time for this particular glitch.

I fixed this on my 2019 Mac Mini (Catalina OS) by downloading the latest version of Catalina from the App Store and reinstalling on top of my existing installation (no factory reset as such) and been fine for a few days without random reboots while in sleep/nap mode.

Having the same issue 😢

Mine is a 2018 Mac Mini. 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i3.

I've had this particular Mac for about 8 months and it's been running fine. Up until last week I was running macOS Mojave, and then I upgraded to Catalina (10.15.3). Ever since then, most mornings when I wake the computer, I have the "BAD MAGIC!" error and find that the computer has been rebooted over night.

Chatted to Mac Support online yesterday, and they were pretty useless. Had me reinstall Catalina yesterday, and of course, I had the same error when I woke the computer this morning.

I find it hard to believe that it's a hardware fault when this only started happening after upgrading to Catalina, but since there's not a lot more that I can test, and there's no definitive answer here from everyone elses experience, I guess the only thing now is to take it into Apple and see what they say.

I have two other Mac Minis, and I upgraded those to Catalina on the same day as this one, and both seem to be working fine since the upgrade. One of the other Minis is the same model as the version I'm having issues with, and the other Mini is an old one from Late 2012.

Bad Magic finally stopped. My MacBook Air, that is. Dozens of random shutdowns, dozens of error reports sent to Apple. Send those error reports to Apple ... I went to the Apple store and they replaced the logic board within 3 days ... backup everything if you can while your machine is still operating ... my MacBook totally died, fully charged ... but if you’re under the one-year manufacture warranty you’re ok ... I barely made it!

PSA

Time Machine backup in Catalina 10.15.3 is bugged! I've tried one myself (4th logicboard replacement) and the restore didn't work!

So for those of you doing refunds/replacements, be sure to use alternative backup solutions if you are on 10.15.3. Wow.

I was going to reply to the Apple Support email about this to raise the issue on the case number and have my 'product specialist' call me...but...

THE APPLE MAIL APP DELETED THE EMAIL 😂🤣. I should probably disconnect all my mail accounts from yet another bugged piece of apple software before it randomly deletes important messages (yes the deleted email synced to my gmail account and even skipped trash!). I didn't believe it till it happened to me.

https://www.techradar.com/au/news/macos-catalina-is-reportedly-causing-some-users-emails-to-go-missing

This is of course my fault and I should spend 3 hours on the phone with apple support to find this out.

My business charges $110 an hour for scheduled work during normal business hours. But we're local only.

I have a customer's 2017 iMac Pro on the bench right now. Checking it before sending in to AppleCare for "Bad Magic". Started happening after adding an external display so we're going to check for that.

My 2016 15" MBP started having key repeat issues after a firmware update. Apple replaced outside of warranty for a bad keyboard. Seems to me like it was a bad firmware update. My keys may have been a little sticky but were fine until the update changed something. Perhaps something similar is happening the the T2 chip and/or Bridge OS?