M1 16 inch MacBook Pro failure after 18 months

[Chuckster26]

chuckster wrote:
"I’ve just received a second call from the Apple Store that neither the Revive or the full Restore solved my M1Max MBP black screen.
I’ve been reading this thread today, hoping for a miracle, but it appears that my MBP is dead and unusable, and to fix it — Apple is asking my to pay $750 (+tax), even though it is clearly their chip’s problem, because I am out of my 1-year warranty."

Just some thoughts.

Is there ANOTHER Apple Store that is within reasonable driving distance?

If there is, I suggest you take it to THEM, and see what THEY say, before you spend the $750 for a new logic board.

More...
Do you have another Mac at home, or perhaps one "close by" that you could use?

REASON WHY I'm asking:
If you have another Mac that "qualifies" (must be either Apple Silicon or Intel with a t2 chip, and must be running latest Sonoma), you could try using Apple Configurator yourself.

If the "revive" option doesn't work, and if the "restore" option doesn't work either, perhaps you could get it completely erased and start over.

Be comforted in the fact that you are far from the "only one out there" having problems like this. I had a similar failure on a 2021 MacBook Pro 14". Nothing but a quick Apple logo on boot, then "went black".

At the local Apple Store, at first they could neither "revive" nor "restore" it to the state is was previously in (running Monterey).

The only way they got it going again was to install Sonoma. It's running now, but still seems "just a bit quirky" at boot sometimes.

Research on the net seems to indicate that one could kill a MBP 14" or 16" if one tried doing an update with "Pro Motion" switched off. I think that's what happened to me, but can't be certain.

For more on using Apple Configurator (make sure you download the latest version before using it), try the "Mr. Macintosh" pages.

Also, some youtube links:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=get+mac+into+dfu+mode+quickly

Hope this helps. I, too, was confounded by this quirk.

Thank you so much for your response. I really appreciate your advice!

I told the person I spoke to yesterday that I’d like to take my laptop back when he asked if I wanted to send it in for a paid repair. It felt like I’m being held at gunpoint. My options are to give Apple the ransom they are demanding, going to a 3rd party lab (do people even do that? I’m scared!) or have a $4500 bricked laptop at home that I can’t use.. what a horrible feeling!

I did think about taking it to another Apple Store and hoping for a better result, I appreciate you bringing it up.

I am curious, though.. When an issue like this happens, doesn’t the company admit fault and recalls the affected products? Is this too much to ask? And, if they don’t, and it is clear that it happens to too many people for the same reason, does anyone else feel like there is a reason for a class action lawsuit? It just seems so ridiculously insane and unfair for a company worth trillions of dollars to not stand behind their product, and more specifically their own chip.

I’m clearly very upset about these news but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable

 

[Chuckster26]

Hi There, I just had the same problem, mine is a two year old 64gb ram 16inch M1macbook pro.
Had it plugged in to 3 monitors since over a year with no problems. Then yesterday I came back from a walk to see all the monitors in mirror mode and I could see the resolution wasn’t right, so did a restart only to see a Mac logo and then a black screen.
I’m still trying to find out what is wrong.
So it could be only an SSD problem and not the motherboard?

Have you been able to solve this? If you did, would you please mind sharing how?

Thank you very much!

 

[Apple_Robert]

Thank you so much for your response. I really appreciate your advice!

I told the person I spoke to yesterday that I’d like to take my laptop back when he asked if I wanted to send it in for a paid repair. It felt like I’m being held at gunpoint. My options are to give Apple the ransom they are demanding, going to a 3rd party lab (do people even do that? I’m scared!) or have a $4500 bricked laptop at home that I can’t use.. what a horrible feeling!

I did think about taking it to another Apple Store and hoping for a better result, I appreciate you bringing it up.

I am curious, though.. When an issue like this happens, doesn’t the company admit fault and recalls the affected products? Is this too much to ask? And, if they don’t, and it is clear that it happens to too many people for the same reason, does anyone else feel like there is a reason for a class action lawsuit? It just seems so ridiculously insane and unfair for a company worth trillions of dollars to not stand behind their product, and more specifically their own chip.

I’m clearly very upset about these news but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable

Unfortunately, expensive electronics fail at times just like cheap no name electronics. Your Mac failing doesn't necessarily mean Apple is at fault. I get you are upset and on edge but, saying you feel you are being held at gunpoint and other such hyperbole doesn't help the situation.

If the Apple Store diagnosis is accurate, $750 is a lot cheaper than buying another fully specced Mac.

 

[Fishrrman]

Sumthin' tells me that there have been more than a few "failures" like this, and that Apple is "keeping quiet" about them...

 

[mecloud]

Sumthin' tells me that there have been more than a few "failures" like this, and that Apple is "keeping quiet" about them...

My somewhat limited (total of 5 M1/M2 MacBook Pros) experience indicates there may be some variations in exactly what happens in the “computer becomes unbootable after doing a Mac OS update to 12.7 or 13.6 with ProMotion off” scenario.

One oddity is that I didn‘t always see the problem come up right away, there were at least two cases where 2-3 days passed between OS update and “black screen on boot” (though i was using the computers daily).

I also saw variations in whether or not DFU mode worked at all, and (in the cases where it did work and connection via Apple Configurator was accomplished) variations in whether “revive” or ”restore” would work.

It’s still rather shocking to me, over two months after first experiencing this issue, that the mere changing of a computer’s screen refresh rate setting could cause such a catastrophic outcome.

 

[calderini]

While I do appreciate the advice about backups (and I do, in fact, always have an equivalent backup MBP on hand just in case of a failure, and numerous other backups), that’s really not the point of my posting.

The point was:

1) to see if any other M1 16-inch MacBook Pro users (or, really any other recent-generation MacBook Pro users) had experienced any similar failures, and if so…

2) attempt to determine any reasons for said failures.

Most of the time I’ve been using Macs, since 1991 on a IIci, I’ve seen overall improvements in reliability. There’s been the occasional back step, like the flaming dumpster fire that was Mac OS 7.5.X, a strange ATA bus design defect on the early 1999 blue-and-white G3 towers, and most recently the horrible thermal performance and “butterfly keyboards” that plagued the 2016-2019 Intel MacBook Pros. But overall, things are much better now, and the M1/M2 MacBook Pros seem in general to be huge improvements from their Intel predecessors in every way. So this “dropping dead after 18 months” was a bit of a shock, and I’m hoping to eventually get some insight as to why it happened.

It's like sometimes people don't read and comprehend. Having Just purchased a new in box 16 inch M1 Pro MAX 64GB/4TB I'm dammed curious to know what happened to your machine as well. I've had a few weird issues, but mostly ONLY in Adobe Illustrator. (Hangs and Beachballs that should not be happening considering the RAM installed). Hope it all works out well for you and I will continue to follow this thread to see if are able to get any more info.
And.
Good Luck.

 

[Chuckster26]

My somewhat limited (total of 5 M1/M2 MacBook Pros) experience indicates there may be some variations in exactly what happens in the “computer becomes unbootable after doing a Mac OS update to 12.7 or 13.6 with ProMotion off” scenario.

One oddity is that I didn‘t always see the problem come up right away, there were at least two cases where 2-3 days passed between OS update and “black screen on boot” (though i was using the computers daily).

I also saw variations in whether or not DFU mode worked at all, and (in the cases where it did work and connection via Apple Configurator was accomplished) variations in whether “revive” or ”restore” would work.

It’s still rather shocking to me, over two months after first experiencing this issue, that the mere changing of a computer’s screen refresh rate setting could cause such a catastrophic outcome.

I’m really glad you were able to solve this. I’m shocked it happened to multiple M1 & M2 Macbooks! I wish my situation was the same :-(

I succumbed and paid a little over $800 for the repair. I feel cheated and so disgusted with Apple, I can’t even explain how much.. They created this and force the consumer to pay for their mistake. I need my laptop for everyday and work so I didn’t have many choices left.

 

[mecloud]

I’m really glad you were able to solve this. I’m shocked it happened to multiple M1 & M2 Macbooks!

The reason for the multiple issues, in my case, was that I originally (for a couple weeks) thought I was chasing some sort of “hardware failure” scenario since that’s what the problem originally looked like. The situation was especially confused because around this same time I had a WiFi access point fail (in that case, an actual apparent hardware failure) and an older Ethernet switch going intermittent, so I was investigating everything from electrical ground loops to rogue PoE issues. Needless to say, that was a very strange couple of weeks.

 

[Queen6]

I’m really glad you were able to solve this. I’m shocked it happened to multiple M1 & M2 Macbooks! I wish my situation was the same :-(

I succumbed and paid a little over $800 for the repair. I feel cheated and so disgusted with Apple, I can’t even explain how much.. They created this and force the consumer to pay for their mistake. I need my laptop for everyday and work so I didn’t have many choices left.

This is the direction Apple has taken, making it's devices near impossible to repair cost effectively. Personally I now only purchase the cheapest Mac I can get away with unless it's making revenue. Worse with the far more expensive higher end models Apple Care is near mandatory as the repair cost can be significant.

No answer's here, however I've become far more cautious of OTA delta OS updates and new tend to DL the new installer to perform any update. I had an issue after an update with Recovery and I feel the full installer is a safer option as I don't want to be dealing with a bricked or potentially unrecoverable Mac.

While it takes a little more time. I used to do the same years ago with the early Intel models when the OTA updates were not as robust as they are today. All a bit coincidental as my daughters PC has had 2-3 bad updates resulting resetting it, one of my PC's has a bad update luckily I was able to fix that and the M1 MBP's Recovery having issue. All in the space of six months of moving in here...

Q-6