Is it true that Big Sur can brick your MacBook?

[MalagLagoon]

I've got a 2015 Mac Book Pro running Mojave. I have no interest in upgrading the operating system because I need to run the following command (using terminal) several times a day to prevent accidental and unwanted macOS upgrades to Catalina:

sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina"
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0
killall Dock

And it sounds like future operating systems will not allow the above commands to work - therefore, I have zero interest using anything beyond Mojave.

Now I hear that Big Sur is destroying perfectly good laptops by corrupting firmware. Is that really true? Damn. Just, damn - that's whacked.

 

[honestone33]

Where have you heard that? I visit 2 other Mac discussion sites, and have not heard anything about that. Is it possible you heard fake news?

 

[trevis]

Apple's macOS Big Sur may be bricking older MacBook Pro models | AppleInsider

New reports claim that some late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro owners are unable to use their machines after upgrading to macOS Big Sur

appleinsider.com

 

[Natzoo]

I have heard rumors of Catalina doing the same, it’s honestly hit or miss. Updating has become a huge risk as of lately, if you do update, make sure you have a backup and a clone of important data.

i still have Mojave on my 2018 15’

 

[honestone33]

I have heard rumors of Catalina doing the same, it’s honestly hit or miss. Updating has become a huge risk as of lately, if you do update, make sure you have a backup and a clone of important data.

i still have Mojave on my 2018 15’

Good advice. Also, it might be better to do a clean, fresh installation of Big Sur, instead of an update in place.

Better yet, maybe wait until after a couple of releases of Bog Sur come out.

 

[theMarble]

I've got a 2015 Mac Book Pro running Mojave. I have no interest in upgrading the operating system because I need to run the following command (using terminal) several times a day to prevent accidental and unwanted macOS upgrades to Catalina:

sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina"
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0
killall Dock

And it sounds like future operating systems will not allow the above commands to work - therefore, I have zero interest using anything beyond Mojave.

Now I hear that Big Sur is destroying perfectly good laptops by corrupting firmware. Is that really true? Damn. Just, damn - that's whacked.

I've got a 2015 15" (11,4) and I upgraded to 11.0.1 a few days ago. Upgrade went fine, I had Catalina on this machine for about 3-4 months and it sucked, ended up wiping the drive and going to back Mojave then using your command to disable Catalina updates. Big Sur runs perfectly, no issues.

 

[filbert42]

I have a late 2013 Macbook Pro and was thinking of updating but this has put me off. Is it possible to install the update on an external SSD and boot from that? That would allow me to experiment with it.

 

[chrfr]

I have a late 2013 Macbook Pro and was thinking of updating but this has put me off. Is it possible to install the update on an external SSD and boot from that? That would allow me to experiment with it.

The installation is now blocked on the late 2013 and mid 2014 13" MacBook Pros because of the damage that seems to be happening which prevents them from booting. This damage can happen regardless of whether you'd install to an internal or external drive, so you will need to wait until Apple fixes the problem.

 

[filbert42]

The installation is now blocked on the late 2013 and mid 2014 13" MacBook Pros because of the damage that seems to be happening which prevents them from booting. This damage can happen regardless of whether you'd install to an internal or external drive, so you will need to wait until Apple fixes the problem.

Thanks for the info. I’ll definitely wait!

 

[honestone33]

I have a late 2013 Macbook Pro and was thinking of updating but this has put me off. Is it possible to install the update on an external SSD and boot from that? That would allow me to experiment with it.

Yes, you definitely can install it on an external SSD. And that is the smart way to go! I actually plan on doing exactly that (also did it last year with Catalina) on a partition I created on this SSD:

SAMSUNG SSD T7 Portable External Solid State Drive 1TB, Up to USB 3.2 Gen 2, Reliable Storage for Gaming, Students, Professionals, MU-PC1T0T/AM, Gray

The Samsung Portable SSD T7 is the next standard in external storage. With transfer rates up to 9.5x faster than traditional external hard drives and read/ write speeds up to 1050 MB/s1, you can move massive files around with unparalleled ease and fluidity. Its sleek, shock-resistant design is un...

www.amazon.com

But I'm waiting, as there are still 4 critical applications I use that are not yet compatible with Big Sur. As it is, V11.1 of Big Sur will be arriving shortly, and my plan is to download, install, and test Big Sur on that external SSD after V11.2 arrives.

 

[ArPe]

Basically fake news and hysteria.

Configurator 2 running on another Mac will restore your Mac in the event of a bad installer or corrupt recovery partition.

The Genius Bar uses the same and other similar tools to restore Macs and other devices.

 

[chrfr]

Basically fake news and hysteria.

Configurator 2 running on another Mac will restore your Mac in the event of a bad installer or corrupt recovery partition.

It's not fake news, and Configurator will only revive T2-based Macs, not the 2013-2014 models in question. If there were no issues with these 2013-14 models, then Apple would not have revised the installer and blocked Big Sur from installing on these affected computers.

 

[ArPe]

It's not fake news, and Configurator will only revive T2-based Macs, not the 2013-2014 models in question. If there were no issues with these 2013-14 models, then Apple would not have revised the installer and blocked Big Sur from installing on these affected computers.

Uh...I revived multiple Macs this way including the M1. It’s the quickest way to install a clean OS and fresh recovery partition.

Earlier Macs are too easy to restore without it. Can do it with my eyes ties behind my back.

 

[shadyman]

Big Sur didn’t really ”brick“ mine, but it was heavily heating up so I had to downgrade to Catalina.

 

[juan985_Spain]

I've got a 2015 15" (11,4) and I upgraded to 11.0.1 a few days ago. Upgrade went fine, I had Catalina on this machine for about 3-4 months and it sucked, ended up wiping the drive and going to back Mojave then using your command to disable Catalina updates. Big Sur runs perfectly, no issues.

This looks just like me!

 

[Zazoh]

No. It’s not true.

 

[chrfr]

Uh...I revived multiple Macs this way including the M1. It’s the quickest way to install a clean OS and fresh recovery partition.

Earlier Macs are too easy to restore without it. Can do it with my eyes ties behind my back.

You are correct, it will revive Apple Silicon and T2 Macs. It will not revive these 2013/2014 models.
The question is moot anyway because Apple has blocked installation of Big Sur 11.0.1 with the build 20B50 installer after people had problems with the original release on 2013/2014 13” MBPs.

macOS Big Sur Update Bricking Some Older MacBook Pro Models

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...

forums.macrumors.com

Apple Offers Instructions on What to Do if macOS Big Sur Causes Installation Errors on 2013 and 2014 MacBook Pro

Following the release of macOS Big Sur last week, a number of 2013 and 2014 MacBook Pro owners found that the update bricked their machines. Affected users saw their Macs get stuck displaying a black screen after attempting to install the new software. Apple has now addressed this issue in a...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[anubis1980]

I had to reinstall macOS yesterday on my m1 MBA. had the personalisation error. spent hours trying the official fixes etc still had same issue. Will admit I started to panic as I didn't want to have to go to an apple store. Apple support were awful and had no idea, told me they hadn't heard of the issue... I then read somewhere that someone had same issue even though they were on newest 11.01. They used iCloud to remotely erase their Mac, did this and hey presto back in. Squeaky bum time for 5 hours haha.

 

[Zazoh]

I had to reinstall macOS yesterday on my m1 MBA. had the personalisation error. spent hours trying the official fixes etc still had same issue. Will admit I started to panic as I didn't want to have to go to an apple store. Apple support were awful and had no idea, told me they hadn't heard of the issue... I then read somewhere that someone had same issue even though they were on newest 11.01. They used iCloud to remotely erase their Mac, did this and hey presto back in. Squeaky bum time for 5 hours haha.

Also this:

From @Lumpydog on another thread.

1: Shut down your M1 Mac
2: Press and hold the power button down to enter recovery mode
3: Click the "Options" Gear-cog icon and then press the "Continue" button that appears below it
4: On the next screen, STOP. Look to the upper left corner - to the right the Apple Logo in the menu bar, select "Recovery Assistant" (it is the only menu item)
5: In that drop down menu, select "Erase Mac..."
6: Follow the on-screen steps from there

Note - you will need wifi access. From what I can tell, using this process completely reformats the Mac hard drive to a single partition, downloads a fresh copy of Big Sur, creates a new recovery partition and a new OS partition with an OS only install (no Garage Band, iMovie, Pages, Keynote, etc - which you can install later). The process took about an Hour and ten minutes.
************ end quote
It took me 45min but I have Gigabit Fiber connection for internet.

 

[MalagLagoon]

From Wikipedia: Louis Rossmann (born November 19, 1988)[2][3] is an American independent repair technician, YouTube personality, and right to repair activist. He is the owner and operator of Rossmann Repair Group in New York City, a computer repair shop established in 2007 which specializes in logic board-level repair of MacBooks.

Here is a video from Louis Rossmann published about a week ago about Big Sur bricking Apple computers.

Big Sur delivers big kick in the balls to Apple users

 

[honestone33]

All this "bricking" business seems to be baffling! I have 2 Macs: a late 2018 Mac Mini with a 256 gig SSD and 8 gig of Ram (has a T2 chip), and an early 2017 Mac Book Air with a 252 gig SSD and 8 gig of Ram. For both of them, when I moved to Catalina, and also a few times "within" Catalina, I did a clean, fresh installation of Catalina (did it first with V10.15.3, and subsequently with V10.15.4 (that was a backwards move), V10.15.6, and V10.15.7). And each of those was followed by migrating/coping needed files, folders, apps, settings, etc. from a SuperDuper! backup. Never had an issue doing that.

I plan on first installing Big Sur on an external SSD for testing. This will most likely be when V11.2 is released. What I will do is 1) download the installer file for V11.2 to my Mac Mini, 2) launch it and do a fresh, clean installation onto a partition on a Samsung T7 1 TB external SSD, and (assuming it's the same process) migrate/copy needed files, folders, apps, settings, etc. from my Mac Mini to that partition (am using the latest version of Catalina on both machines).

I assume I will not run into issues doing this, nor when I am testing Big Sur from that external SSD. Is that correct?

 

[markszachary54]

My late 2018 MacBook Air was completely bricked by upgrading to Big Sur. Apple Genius Bar and support didn't help at all. I had to buy a new laptop. Very disappointing. They claim it screwed up the logic board. They required a $500 payment just to send it in. I tried everything with no luck. Apple screwed me.

 

[Aggedor]

My late 2018 MacBook Air was completely bricked by upgrading to Big Sur. Apple Genius Bar and support didn't help at all. I had to buy a new laptop. Very disappointing. They claim it screwed up the logic board. They required a $500 payment just to send it in. I tried everything with no luck. Apple screwed me.

How can a software update screw up a logic board?

 

[markszachary54]

I don't know but that is what the Genius Bar, Apple Support, and the Geek Squad all concluded. It seems crazy to me but the laptop is legitimately a brick now and won't start up all due to upgrading to Big Sur. I've read online it is happening to lots of people.

 

[adib]

Yes there were a number of T1 & T2 MacBooks that were bricked by Big Sur beta. However these has been resolved in subsequent beta releases. Furthermore those bricked MacBooks can be revived by resetting the firmware inside those T1/T2 controllers by putting the Mac inside DFU mode and re-flashing it using another Mac.

Thus in terms of permanent hardware damage, there was none caused by Big Sur. That said, be sure to keep current backups. That's what Time Machine is for.