The Big Sur Sneeze
As I’m using my 2019 16" MBP, it lets out, at some random moment, a startlingly aggressive “Fehhhhh,” and then it shuts down.
It sounds as if the fan goes to 11 for about a second, and then it turns silent and dark.
Update (2021-01-01): Ken Harris:
If “big sigh” means it gets really slow, then the display partially turns to random noise, and it goes black, and dumps me back at the log-in screen after a minute, then yes. Seems to be a #macOS Catalina issue here.
Update (2021-02-09): This just happened to me. A minute or so after waking my 2019 16" MacBook Pro running macOS 11.2, it made a surprisingly loud sound and went black.
Update (2022-02-16): Jesse Squires:
Suddenly the MacBook display turns off, the fans turn on full blast for a couple seconds (they are louder than compiling the largest Xcode project you can think of), and then the machine shuts down completely. I’m calling it the “sigh of death” because it’s as if the machine is simply giving up and exhaling in an exasperated, dramatic sigh of defeat — like an exaggerated cartoon character would do. It has happened to me 3-4 times within the past few weeks.
That is how my 2019 15" MacBook Pro died. It happened 2 or 3 times, never recovered the last time. Had to get the logic board replaced. Within 3 months, half (3 of 6) of the MacBooks in my department were in the shop for similar repairs.