MacBook Pro bricked after failed Big Sur update 😵 ⚰️

A week before I got a call from Beijing Apple Store they told my they will order the I/O board parts for me and do a free repair. I’m still waiting for their call once they got the board ready.

I tried contact Apple Store（Beijing）three times. First time they said they can’t repair my bricked mbp because it’s vintage & no parts available. Second time I asked them disconnect I/O board and finished Big Sur upgrade. Third time they said still no solution but it’s a known problem and reported my case.

Apple Store Genius Bar staff said they got a new “internal document” allow them do this free repair for me. So I suggest everyone contact your local Apple Store again and escalate.

Heres my situation and the steps Ive taken so far. I'll try to make this as short as possible.

I live in Norway, where Apple does not have any Apple stores og Genius bars. We do have an independent company called "Eplehuset" (direct translates Applehouse) which is an Apple Autorized Service Provider. So in november when the update left my machine unresponsive, and I didnt know as much about these issues as I do now, I handed in my machine there for a technician to take a look, at a cost of 600 NOK (69 usd) which I agreed to. They figured out that my i/o board was defect and they needed to replace that for my machine to be working again. The total price for this repair/replacement would be 2500 NOK (300 usd).

I did not agree to this, so I contacted AppleCare and got absolutely NO HELP when speaking to two norwegian advisors, they hadnt even heard of these issues. I found the tip to get in touch with the international AppleCare by staying on the US page on the getapplesupport website and scheduled a call from AppleCare via the chat (Cora).

A guy named Chris called me from Ireland a couple of days later, but since I didnt have my machine at hand he couldnt help me. He had to go through some steps with me that had to get logged before I could talk to a senior advisor. He also repeatedly said that there was no way an software update could cause hardware to defect and break, so my "old" machine had to have some underlying issues. Og boy.. if I hadnt studied all your situations and prepared for the call, I would have started to doubt my case and probably give up. I asked to schedule another call a couple of days later.

So in order to escalate my case at Apple I needed to get my machine from "Eplehuset", even if that ment me paying the 600 NOK for them to troubleshoot my machine. But I could not get my machine, if I needed to hand it back in for repair later (which I have to in the end even if Apple covers the cost or not). But I got the technician to log the information from the troubleshoot in the Apple system, so that when I had my 4th Apple support call they would hopefully see this information via a confirmation ID. That call was supposed to be today but somehow the Apple system fucked up my phonenumber by doubling the norwegian country code so I just receive an email that they had tried to come in contact with me. And also it seems Im back in the norwegian apple support system since the email i received was in norwegian instead of english as the previous one. I havent found a way for me to change my phonenumber and reschedule the call on my case, so now Ive lost my thread and connection to apple support.

Like treaders say, I am bewildered by Apple and their hopeless system

Please share the steps you've gone through with Apple, it is so helpful to read all the experiences and gives me strength to continue this fight.

Hello!

I’ve left my 2018 MBP at tech repair 30 days ago. I inquire daily on progress of the case. Until now Apple hasn’t provided a diagnostic yet, let alone a solution for the my problem.

I too was initially bewildered by Apple response...now I’m getting really frustrated and infuriated by this lack of assistance. 30 days without my main working machine is unacceptable under any circumstance.

I’m glad some people are getting proper support from Apple, specially those with access to Official AppleStore, but I suspect I’ll be given the option to “escalate” my case for more 30 days.

I find all this shameful and I will never accept to pay a cent for this. All this makes me question my future commitment to Apple products: I didn’t mind to pay “higher than competitors” prices because I trusted I was acquiring a better, more reliable and more supported product...but then I get this issue, and worst, this support!?

Hi everyone, and thank you for your support during the past month, I have read all your comments, even the deleted ones. I really hope mine does not get censored.

For the TL:DR guys, I fixed my Bricked book and it runs under Big Sur WITHOUT hardware change.

For everyone else, read along.

My expierence

I have a MacBook Pro 13 (mid 2014)

What I did

I did the update from Catalina to Big Sur on 13. Nov and left it running over night, it had a black screen with backlight on the next day, went hiking and left it running for 24h+ since I read it can take a while, but nothing changed.

Did everything, SMC reset, nvram pram reset, tried to start into recovery mode, did all the possible startup key combinations, but the screen kept showing black. I even drained the battery and left it on for several days.

Talking to Apple Support

After a chat with Apple Support (which instructed to do the resets I already did, but was very friendly and tried to help) I was asked to get an appointment at the local apple store's Genius Bar, where I couldn't get an appointment because of, well the situation we all experience.

Today the macOS 11.1 came and it asked me if I want to update, I first flinched but then click install

It took some time, it showed the apple a lot of times and then finally finished installing

I restarted, it did the 2xchime again, I checked the installed EFI version (2012022042) bootrom version (429.0.0.0.0) and SMC version (2.16f68), everything look good so I tried...

I clicked shutdown

I pressed the power button

It started with one chime

Everyone here, I can tell you from my experience, that the IO Board is not necessarily broken, it looks to me like a bug in the startup routine of macOS.

For legal reasons I do not recommend opening the Mac yourself, better have this done certified authorized engineer.

[Edited by Moderator]

Great your back up and running and have some helpful detail in your post.

The update process is certainly different to in the past, I don’t recall so many restarts and the likes but my 2014 MacBook Pro continued the installation in the end with another installing first time.

Forking out large repair costs or buying new devices isn’t really ideal during these odd times.

I SO THANK YOU for ALL this INFORMATION!

AS I had SO many problems after the installation of CATALINA {it STILL continues]!

I DO hope they don't suspend you~as Apple did me, when I wrote that I had such PROBLEMS w/that installation!

MOJAVE worked PERFECTLY for me! Plus, I had just had my device--a "vintage MAC PRO" repaired!

SO I AM SO GRATEFUL I CHECKED BEFORE INSTALLING BIG SUR-. due to my horrid experience with

CATALINA~

IF YOU SHOULD EVEN "see this" as Apple may totally remove my access to the Community!

Wishing you & your FAMILY-HEALTH & SAFETY during this TWILIGHT ZONE TIMES we are living in!

PEACE~regenad+

regenad wrote:

I SO THANK YOU for ALL this INFORMATION!

AS I had SO many problems after the installation of CATALINA {it STILL continues]!

I DO hope they don't suspend you~as Apple did me, when I wrote that I had such PROBLEMS w/that installation!

MOJAVE worked PERFECTLY for me! Plus, I had just had my device--a "vintage MAC PRO" repaired!

SO I AM SO GRATEFUL I CHECKED BEFORE INSTALLING BIG SUR-. due to my horrid experience with

CATALINA~

IF YOU SHOULD EVEN "see this" as Apple may totally remove my access to the Community!

Wishing you & your FAMILY-HEALTH & SAFETY during this TWILIGHT ZONE TIMES we are living in!

PEACE~regenad+

I am not surprised that they said they were going to remove your access to the Community. You should probably read the forums terms of use.

Dear Moderator, thanks for editing my post, I did not know I violated any of the rules.

Everyone else, if you can, update to the latest version 11.1 this fixed my MacBook Pro, my previous post does not include the actual fix anymore, and I cannot share it here.

Good luck.

That awesome! Can anyone else who has installed the update with 11.1 please confirm that it works ok for you? I'm still holding off updating my MBP 13" Early 2015 to Big Sur until I have some assurance this latest update has fixed the install problems.

I shared this on one of the first few pages, but Big Sur 11.0.1 bricked my 13" 2014 MacBook Pro. After a ton of troubleshooting with Apple support (the basics, just for data collection) I had to take it in for repair to get it working in again with a logic board replacement.

It came back with Catalina working again with the only outstanding issue being it took literally 30 seconds before it tried to boot or played the startup chime. Annoying, but Apple wouldn't do anything about that. By then Apple had pulled 11.0.1 for these machines. That was fine, it's an admission there was a problem needing to be fixed.

Against my better judgement, I tried the 11.1 installer. I was hoping for something official statement somewhere about the issues being fixed. I felt it was a big risk to try it without it but also decided Apple would be pretty stupid to offer it to these machines if they hadn't have found a solution.

Fortunately, I didn't have a problem. Install took a fair bit longer than usual and rebooted more times than usual and had a disconcerting white flash of the screen at one point. But it did eventually complete successfully and is currently running without issue. I haven't tried restarting it yet to see if the 30 second delay on boot has been fixed.

Hope that gives enough courage to some other enterprising people to give it a shot and share their experience.

This issue seems resolved with the 11.1 update released. My MBP 13" early 2015 was bricked with the final release of Big Sur after having been a part of the developer beta all summer long without issue. After trying everything I retired my dead MBP13 until this evening I figured why not try Internet Recovery with 11.1 and see what happens? Well it worked. I didn't have to bring the MBP into Apple or anything. Everything is now working great.

I powered it up holding down the cmd-R key combo, made sure it was joined to my wifi network (upper right corner) then proceeded to do the normal install of Big Sur. It took awhile but it worked. Previously I had tried resetting PRAM, SMC, booting off an installer on a USB drive...internet recovery...everything. But this worked. So 11.1 has the fix to re-apply the correct firmware before install.

Yep I have the same laptop model you have -early 2015 MBP. After having been bricked, I can confirm 11.1 just released does indeed resolve the issue and I am now "unbricked." I was able to install Big Sur 11.1 using internet recovery just fine.

Apple finally replaced my motherboard. I gave it away when they shipped back. I now run a windows pc. I did buy a new iPhone. They will have to do something more than a yearly marginal update to get me to switch now.

After almost 3 weeks I got my MacBook Pro mid-2015 15” retina with the integrated graphics card. Previous to the issue After updating from Catalina to big Sur 11.0.1 the screen stopped working.

apple wanted 831$

some third party said it was the logic board $$$$

Ubreakifix charged me 349$ and they repaired it. Took a while. But it’s back. They said it was the gpu power ic that needed re-soldering.

they had to wipe my drive and I was fine with that. Not giving passwords out..

so in the end UbreakIfix fixed it.

now it’s at Catalina.... 11.1 came out today.... very gun shy of updating this to big Sur....

probably will at least I’ll be in the 30 day repair window.