updating to 6.0 bricked my atv and as i recall it did not ship with cable

Do you have a Kindle or any other micro USB cord? Because that should work.

That said, I have the same issue and I have a cord, so I don't know what to do. Looks like we both have bricks for the moment.

Good to know that I'm not alone! Just like you two, the unit bricked in the middle of the update (I got a pic of a usb cable pointing to a iTunes symbol), grabbed the USB/micro USB cord off my camera, tried a factory reset...and then nothing. Tell all your friends on FB not to update until they figure this out--I imagine it has something to do with the recent iTunes update to 11.1. Good luck!

My AppleTV apparently just bricked as well doing this update. The led light kept blinking and nothign was showing on my screen, so I unplugged the power, reconnected it, and now this screen about connecting it to iTunes. I hope there's some way to fix this and that my AppleTV isn't permanently ruined because of the update.

I just spoke to an Apple support guy on the phone, and he told me to take it in to the local Apple Store; of course, with the phones being released today, the place will be empty. #badtiming

Press and hold Menu and Play/Pause until the white light on the Apple TV blinks even faster. It should force a restart and then it will boot fine from there.

What I did exactly was to restore with iTunes and when it says your Apple TV has been restored and then to connect it back up to your TV, I unplugged the MicroUSB, plugged in the HDMI and Ethernet, it booted up and the light started to blink quickly. I then pressed and held Menu and Play/Pause to do a hard restart, the light blinks even faster, it restarts and booted fine. By the way I have a 3rd Generation 1080p Apple TV and when I restore it in iTunes it also needs the power plugged in to it unlike the 2nd generation 720p model which only the needed MicroUSB plugged into it.

Ok, I'm not exactly sure why this worked, but this is what just happened...

1. Searched Google, came up with a few posts regarding the update to 5.3, and sure enough: some units got bricked. One of the commentators suggested that instead of updating it via an ethernet cable, to use wireless instead.

2. I had originally tried to update the ATV via a wireless connection, and that's when the **** went down; I tried resetting it via removing the power cord, and when that didn't work, connected it to iTunes to reformat it. Neither worked.

3. Called Apple Support. No help.

4. Decided to try (nothing to lose, right?) hooking the unit to the router via an ethernet cable, and....everything woked.

5. Went to Settings, checked that it was indeed updated to 6.0, and all my passwords, etc., were there.

6. So, moral of the story is: if you've already reformatted it, use a direct connection if you originally tried via wireless, or wireless if you originally tried via ethernet. Why is mine now working? I haven't a clue. Good luck!

You can buy a mini USB cable at any two-bit drug store or Walmart for a couple of dollars.

MAJOR FAIL on this update Apple - you need to pull the update before 1000s get effected by this bug.

@P51oss: Tried that, didn't work.

@Rick In Sacramento: Tried ethernet cable (instead of wifi), and that didn't work either.

Anant, did you try reformatting with a mini-usb to iTunes first?