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

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.

In my case that issue started four days ago, after installing the last security update in a MacMini 2018 running macOS 10.14.6. I had a reboot warning popup after each start up of the computer, with no further problems, the computer just worked fine.

A NVRAM reset has solved this problem to me.

Thank you!

Same here: After I installed the security-update on my 2018-MacMini (running Mojave btw) the computer would panic/reboot with the BAD-MAGIC-error every time I put it to sleep.

VERY annoying.

I did an nvram -reset (CMD-OPT-P-R during boot) and now the computer behaves again as it should.

How do you disable the graphic card switching ?

Reset SMC is Apple’s ”Have you tried turning your PC off and on again?”

PERMANENT FIX: GET IT REPLACED UNTIL THE SYMPTOMS GO AWAY.

If you tolerate this issue thinking Apple is going to help you, you will be apalled that they have no intention to do so.

It looks like the similarity in all the issues are two displays connected. I haven’t had the issues for a day or two now.

I did reset and reinstall the computer, everything was working fine until I turned on the external monitor and it freeze right away. So I figured it could be graphic card switching. I got it back to work and did a test, switched off graphics function in power saver - bum, doesn't even pass the loading screen anymore.

i have a 16" that had the bad magic crash one time on the first day, after i had (mistakenly) used it to delete a year of time machine backups from an external drive. it never had the crash since then (knocking on lots of wood), and my heavy use is parallels with dedicated computer assisted translation software, as well as photoshop and lightroom. i had problems with a wireless mouse which, when it was losing its charge and needed recharging, caused the trackpad and keyboard to freeze multiple times; i stopped using that mouse and have an old usb 2.0 mouse (with a usb c dongle thingie) and have had no problems since. i did have problems with a blue tinted screen after waking the computer up a few times, but that has stopped.

the T2 chip version as described above is

 iBridge2,14  J152fAP  4.2 (17P2551/17.16.12551.0.0,0

so it is the J152FAP that your friend in Germany has (mine is purchased in the US)

fwiw mine behaves now, but it scared the bejeezus out of me when this happened on the first day and i almost traded it in until i saw the problems others were having (still) and decided that since nothing had happened yet.. well, fingers are still crossed that it stays that way

yeah, I’ve noticed that I had more of those panics when I was on 10.15, and on 10.15.2 it happened just once and didn’t happen at all during any heavy work. There is also Catalina 10.15.3 beta available for developers maybe it would get fixed there.

I tested it. I flashed T2 as per Apple’s directions for imac pro and the macbook pro.

https://help.apple.com/configurator/mac/2.7.1/?lang=en#/apdebea5be51

Then I disabled the secure boot, file vault encryption, sleep wake functions...

It always comes back. Seems to work for a while though.

I cannot believe Apple is not acting on this. I got disappointed and do not think I am going to invest my money on its computer line for a long time.

I also turned off all those energy saver preferences and have at least had far less incidents.... but it still happens. It happened at some point in the night. Not a big deal but annoying for such an expensive new machine.

I have had this issue 3x so far. Once waking out of hibernation while on battery power, once after waking out of hibernation on battery power and then just now, 5 minutes after a reboot while researching the issue 😂

I'll add my screenshot to the lot for good measure

Seeing the advice regarding FileVault, I've turned it off for now... let's see if that fixes it. If not, off to Apple Support.

I had the problem for the past months (since i started working with connected screens and hard-drives with Catalina) with no real fix except disconnect all external devices before the computer is left to enter sleep mode. That's not what i call acceptable conditions of work for such a "pro" device.

So i took 2 decisions :

• Wait for the next Catalina update that is being released shortly. If the instability is not totally fixed i'll stick to Apple consumer hotline like glue, till it's replaced or fixed or refunded. Since i can easily reproduce the crash they can't deflect my complains for long.
• Contact more tech influencers on blogs and youtube to make them aware of what is going on and have a sens of the scale if they already know about it.

The bottom line is that if this crash is widespread and old, the chances it's hardware related are big. And if so, time wise, it's bad news for all Apple users with the T2 chip (all units produced since fall 2017). Finger crossed.

Another Update

Guys I just checked the laptops which are used at work. All of them are Macbook Pro 2019 models with Catalina OS. They are 15" variants.

None of those devices have a problem reported. I checked with all of my colleagues. They have never seen it happen. So I don't think this is a software problem. Also a lot of people have mentioned that they don't see it on work macbooks. So I am suspecting this as a BAD BATCH of productions. Nonetheless Apple should accept this fault.