MacBook Pro bricked after failed Big Sur update 😵 ⚰️

Here's an odd clue. My MBP 13" late 2013 had a hard time in the upgrade. Hours of black screen and all they various key combination restarts. It finally came to life and I was using, noting all the havoc it wreaked on apps. I happily was working and had need to reboot. It wouldn't back to the black screen. I let it be for an hour and it was still black. I disconnected absolutely everything and restarted again and it did boot up. Slowly, but it did.

That's unbelievable! Apple has only just recently updated their macOS Big Sur download installer to temporarily exclude certain MacBook Pro models (such as your MacBook Pro Late 2013) while they figure this out - as they know it is bricking some of them. And obviously your MacBook Pro was working fine prior to the update... otherwise how would it be possible to update it? I would go back to them and ask why you were charged when Apple have now removed your MacBook Pro model from the supported installation list.

When trying to install the Big Sur update, this happened to my MacBook Pro 2019: it got stuck on the installation screen and that’s it - nothing helps. It has been like that for more than 12 hours and I don’t know what to do :-(( I’m utterly helpless...

After more than a week dealing with this problem, we are still on page 15 here. I got numerous posts in my email inbox from this discussion regarding a problem with the I/O board. When I clicked on the link in the email back to the discussion, they were gone.

And now I see from Arslan77 that Apple replaced the I/O board.

As someone said, take some time and write a comment to apple feedback:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

I think this I/O board gate will become bigger than any issue before. Apple is forced by law to provide spares for seven years. Therefore this machines als old but not vintage.

In times of climate change it is important for a big company to produce long lasting products and to provide support for it. In the past Apple did that in a good way. For many people their older stuff do the job. They could easily afford a new one. Over the years many of them equiped their homes with Apple stuff. In my family there are Macs, iPads, iPhones, AppleTV, Earphones of different generations. It all started with a late 2013 macbook pro and let me spent over 25000€ on Apple products.

At this moment I write on my 2013 macbook with Big Sur on it, after having a black screen last week did the same what the geniuses did for Arslan77. I got deep in it and yes the geniuses are right there is a I/O board problem. But I fixed the problem without replacing this board.

i knew it was risky to update this early before seeing if others had issues first or even to wait a few updates before upgrading. It’s best to wait a while to see if the new OS release is causing issues before updating so soon. I’ll bet the update they released for Big Sur that only will show up on macs that haven’t upgraded yet probably addresses this issue maybe.

luckily I was able to fix mine without having to replace any parts although if I didn’t have a backup I would have been in trouble as it wouldn’t recognize my FileVault password anymore so I had to erase and reinstall using internet recovery combined with a lot of force shutdowns and SMC resets when restarting.

after successfully installing Big Sur or even Catalina before that it went to a black screen every restart. I kept it off the charger and the next day around 3 or 4 it started working normally again and restarted everytime with no black screen. i have been using it for over a week now with no more black screen. I updated first day it was released. I have a mid 2014 MB Pro.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/19/apple-releases-macos-11-0-1-big-sur-revised/

I have the exact same issue did all the trouble shooting "of SMC, PRAM, holding shift, option keys, recovery mode etc" with an apple support tech over the phone, then they said it was hardware and head to take it the genius bar. They got an appointment scheduled for 5 days later. So (today) I brought it in today. They tore it down all the way down to the mainboard, and found that it wouldn't post but the magsafe light, fans and all that start up.

"Something as invasive as a software install broke it "it wont even post".

The genius bar tech says that they can order the new motherboard for me for $474.00 US

They said there was nothing they could do more there, as they are not authorized to do free hardware repairs, but I could call apple care and see if they can do anything.

I am a front line worker (therapist) and use this daily. I loved this machine, it showed no signs of issue at all, and then the big sur install bricked it.

I'm on the phone with apple care now, got through to a nice lady named Kim, who I explained the issues too, and the above trouble shooting. Now Kelly.

While I know mine was an issue with the iMac, I held the power button down, restarted holding command-r on re-start and got into recovery mode where I was able to use my back-up to at least get my machine back to where it was. What a waste of time & effort! I sure hope Apple gets the folks with MacBooks whole again. This is INEXCUSABLE in this day & age!

My late 2014 MacBook Pro 13 inch bricked also. I forgot it was updating and it appears it went to sleep at night when I found it on the 14th Nov. Being too busy to roll up my sleeves and start the restore process (as I have access to another Macbook Pro of which I disabled the auto update until my bricked hurdle is resolved), I managed to gather a external HDD just in case Time Machine would fail me. I could restart into recovery using CMD and R but the kids took the power out and it eventually died (my Macbook sleep mystery is another story). This morning it boots into the setup screen. I am staggered how this happened but it saved me a bunch of time. I will summarise below as the above has a little confusion in it.

My Macbook bricked, I could see the Apple logo with a black screen and the white bar at around a 3rd which was not moving (I don't know if it was installing or what, no status or % bar). I planned to recover it and restarted into recovery where you see Time Machine, Disk Utility and 2 other functions. However power was lost and the battery drained to 0%. Plugging in my charger, I am welcomed by a setup screen.

Observations, Set up was slow, my avatar icon large and blurry. On the Siri option it appears that "Checking iCloud Updates" was unresponsive (go back and then continue again got past this). It eventually finished (whilst showing me what I had open before I started the update, its more that weird this update) and now my Macbook Pro is up and running again!

All I done was 2 things, put it in recovery to see the menu, then accidently drain the battery.

I tried to install Big Sur on my iMac and it failed with about 15min. left on the install part of the update. The only option given was to boot in target disk mode which wouldn't help me. After shutting down my mac, I was able to restart from a backup drive using Carbon Copy Cloner and reinstall Catalina from that. Now I have an "update" disk image on my desktop that I don't know if I can delete or not. At least Catalina is working, but I'm afraid to try installing Big Sur again after what happened before. Very frustrating and disappointing.

unfortunately as far as Apple is concerned this not a well known issue. The techs at the Genius Bar and phone support believe software cannot damage hardware. Considering that has been debunked since 2002 when viruses were able to crash bioses the only fix would be new hardware that has a working bios chip. The machine is 7 years old and out of warranty even if you got Apple car which I did.

since Big Sur just came out I’m sure they are not even considering restitution or Genius Bar fixes. Best we can do is to keep sharing our stories here until they see a pattern or they get a bunch of bad press

My 2015 MacBook Air bricked but was able to be fixed. I did lose all of my data that was stored on the hard drive but it was fixed. Apple Support call walked me through all the steps. Command + R, erase the disk, internet re-install. I then had to try again with Big Sur and it worked. Took a long time to install and the “less than a minute remaining” actually took like 20 minutes. Call Apple Support.

Shouldn’t be loosing any data, Terminal would have made it possible to copy data to an external HDD with some help from Google. I was about to do it but my MacBook burst back to life after a depleted battery on the recovery screen.

I just spoke an Apple senior advisor for the third time. This was after two Genius Bar visits and two Apple Support online chats. Apple's legal department has refused any compensation. The ~AU$1200 repair quotation is still applicable.

I am stunned.

I paid a premium price for Apple's product to avoid issues and to ensure reliability.

I am not disputing the fact that my MacBook Pro is approaching six years old. However, the MacBook was functioning prior to accepting Apple's System Preference > Software Upgrade notification, ensuring my MacBook satisfied the age requirement to upgrade to MacOS Big Sur and backing up my data. I am not aware of operating system upgrades destroying hardware before this issue.

So very disappointed in Apple. After encountering AirPods battery life issues earlier this year plus Apple Watch Bluetooth disconnection issues it's possibly too much for me.

Same issue when their update bricked my wifes iPhone 7! We had to buy a new phone, no help from Apple after nagging constantly to update & when we finally did, a bricked phone! As a stockholder from way back I'm highly distrubed by updates ruining hardware. Something is seriously wrong!

Nothing special, just escalated problem to the engineer level with help from my Apple advisor and made a video attached to issue how MBK Pro mid2014 turning on and off. Also attached a picture of official response from the Apple authorized service with acknowledgment of bricked MBP (and suggested they solution via whole motherboard change). After several days Apple advisor promise me to offer exclude code for free repair to the service selected. Going to visit there Friday 11/27.