Big Sur Bricking MacBook Pros
Hartley Charlton (tweet, Hacker News):
A large number of late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro owners are reporting that the macOS Big Sur update is bricking their machines. A MacRumors forum thread contains a significant number of users reporting the issue, and similar problems are being reported across Reddit and the Apple Support Communities, suggesting the problem is widespread.
I tried a number of the things that were advised below, but so far, none worked. I’ll try an install from USB next, I guess. It won’t be the end of the world if my data on this machine is lost, but still… makes me sad for my non-developers friends who have to deal with this.
[…]
this is machine is only 2 years old I think.
Previously:
Update (2020-11-17): Becky Hansmeyer:
I still get emails from my college (because I used to work there and they didn’t take me off the mailing list). Got this one from the Help Desk today about Big Sur. 😳
Pol23 (via Hacker News):
Then I closed the screen but the black light was still illuminating the apple on the back of my 2014 13' MBP. I opened it back up andpowered it down. Then tried restareing but got nothing but the black screen, no apple logo..
[…]
All of that lead to nothing. Genius Bar Reservations are hard to obtain during covid times.
Update (2020-11-20): Mr. Macintosh (also: MacRumors):
macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 (20B50) is Live
The only change?
The 2013-14 13" MacBook Pro’s have been removed from the Big Sur Installer compatibility list
Owners complained that the upgrade caused their Mac to boot to an unrecoverable black screen
Apple has now addressed this issue in a new support document that provides instructions on what to do if macOS Big Sur can’t be installed on a 2013 or 2014 MacBook Pro machine. Apple suggests Mac owners experiencing these issues unplug external devices, attempt restarting, reset the SMC, and reset NVRAM or PRAM.
[…]
To be safe, those with older MacBook Pro models from 2013 or 2014 should avoid installing the macOS Big Sur update at this time until a more definitive fix becomes available.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
I held off upgrading to Catalina. Now I'm wondering if I should I should stick with Mojave on my late 2013 mbp until Apple releases a M1 mbp that can power two external monitors.
Is there something that went well with the release of Big Sur?
- 3rd party developers were given a 2-day notice for the release date.
- the final release is not 11.0.
- the day of the release, the Apple servers did not work well
- some supported devices are getting bricked
- there are holes in the wall.
- Big Sur UI and UX are not that well received.
