macOS Big Sur Update Reportedly Bricks Some Older MacBook Pros (engadget.com) 117
Engadget writes:
According to MacRumors, users on Apple's forums and Reddit are stuck with a black screen when trying to update their late 2013 or mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro models to Big Sur...
An engineer investigating one customer's problems appeared to have resolved the issue after removing an IC chip for the HDMI port, but it's not certain that's the cause.
Citing user reports, MacRumors writes ominously that "Key reset combinations, including NVRAM, SMC, safe mode, and internet recovery, are all reportedly inaccessible after attempting to install the update, leaving no way to bypass the static black screen."
Citing user reports, MacRumors writes ominously that "Key reset combinations, including NVRAM, SMC, safe mode, and internet recovery, are all reportedly inaccessible after attempting to install the update, leaving no way to bypass the static black screen."
Still on Mojave (Score:5, Insightful)
Who in their right mind updates Apple products immediately? Their software always has annoying bugs, and IMHO, the new features are rarely must haves that you can't wait a few months to get. I can't even name one new feature of Big Sur beyond the ARM support.
Apple software is pretty good in the end, but first releases have always been buggy. It might be better if you've got the latest hardware, since I imagine they test on this more thoroughly, but I've never had the latest stuff so don't know.
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I mean... if you buy Apple products, you're already not in your right mind, unless you enjoy not having control of your computer. [slashdot.org]
Re:Still on Mojave (Score:4, Insightful)
I did like my 2015 macbook pro (the one that still has magsafe, ports, a usable keyboard without a touchscreen on it, etc), but there is no way I'm going to go for a new mac when they pull something like this.
Actually looking forward to purchase a good linux laptop. Might even go with System 76, they are starting to look good (spec and function, not aesthetic).
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Last time I was looking for a Linux laptop I've found these:
https://slimbook.es/en/store [slimbook.es]
but didn't buy one in the end (I did buy one of the mini PCs and I'm very happy with it). I'm not up to date with PC specs. How do those compare to System 76?
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I'm looking for a somewhat beefy latptop, so Slimbooks looks a bit light for my use case.
For me, it seems Oryx Pro or Adder WS from System76 is a good option. That or a Dell Precision 5000 series with Ubuntu preinstalled.
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So, in short: Don't listen to me. I'll do more research
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Cool, thanks. I was looking at slimbooks because it's pretty much a local company and I always like to support those. But I'm using old Dell Precision now and don't really have a reason to upgrade. When I do, I will check out slimbooks again.
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Still going on about that? That traffic is generated by Gatekeeper [iphoneincanada.ca], an optional function on your Mac that checks the integrity of your applications [wikipedia.org].
the system will ... verify whether it is:
blacklisted,
code-signed by Apple or a certified developer,
the code-signed contents still match the signature.
You could do this locally, but then how do you guarantee the integrity of the blacklist and code signatures? Apple made the right decision in having the OS call home to get this data.
Some blogger got his panties in a twist over Apple being able to locate you via TCP/IP packet header info on those Gatekeeper requests, but never stopped to ask if Apple's actually
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How do you know what Apple is doing with the data? And why are they making it so hard to disable the telemetry?
My example was just one of incredibly many reasons to avoid Apple.
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what do you mean, "so hard"? This is the entirety of the instructions:
this option can be re-enabled by using the 'sudo spctl --master-disable' command from the Terminal and authenticating with an admin password. Then set control panel 'Security and Privacy - General - Allow apps downloaded from' to "anywhere".
What Apple is doing with the data is evident from the fact that I've never been advertised to based on the applications I use on my Mac.
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You could do this locally, but then how do you guarantee the integrity of the blacklist and code signatures?
By the time the malware has that kind of access it's game over anyway.
Besides what is the T2 chip for if not this kind of thing? It's powerful enough to run Doom, it can surely validate some signatures or check against a blacklist.
Re:Still on Mojave (Score:5, Informative)
I mean... if you buy Apple products, you're already not in your right mind, unless you enjoy not having control of your computer.
You better be using Linux, because if you think Apple is bad....
A network I'm involved with needs uptime as close to 100 percent as possible. But Windows 10 updates have a tendency to make some arbitrary decisions and delete or rename drivers and perform other mischief. So I turned off Windows update services
Then on the day we were running a simulated emergency exercise, We booted, and had to wait for the computer to update. And it was a big one. So we were late.
I also had a forced update on another device running Enterprise during the middle of an event dealing with millions of people.
Turns out that Microsoft has many ways of getting into your computer, and can and will change settings, names, and is getting pretty aggressive about erasing programs that give false positives. Been dealing with a program that defender claims is a trojan. The computer erases it (even erased the entire download folder content) and the only fix is to disable all protections, then install the program, protect it from Defender, then and only then, re-enable defender.
In our quest to make computing safe for people that can't protect their computers by themselves, we've given up control.
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Early adopters? There have to be *some* people that find all the problems so people further along in the adoption curve know what to work around.
Ex-Apple Software Tester Still on High Sierra (Score:3)
> Early adopters? There have to be *some* people that find all the problems so
> people further along in the adoption curve know what to work around.
I’m so old I remember when the term for those people was "software testers."
Disclaimer: Ex-Apple software tester still on High Sierra, as I want to manage my iPhone apps and run the last good version of M$ Word.
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I've posted an extended rant on Apple software quality: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse... [linkedin.com]
Re: Still on Mojave (Score:3)
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The reason is that Windows users are already agressive enough because of the OS.
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Language-specific icons? Isn't the whole point that the icon should be language-agnostic?
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Think different!
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It's actually quite difficult to do language agnostic icons.
For example in Japan the Sony Playstation uses X to cancel and O to confirm. That's the normal cultural meaning of those icons.
In the West they use X to confirm and O to cancel, the opposite. In the West sometimes X means "no" or "cancel" or "wrong", but sometimes it means "yes" or "this one" like when you go to vote and put your cross in the box.
Japan doesn't use tick marks in that context so that wasn't an option. The simple shapes (X, O, triangl
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Instead of trying to pander to the West, where X also sometimes means "this one/vote" but usually means "cancel/wrong", they should have gone with coloured buttons. Nobody in their right mind would think an X on red button would have meant "ok/confirm/go". The "circle/O" could easily be remembered as meaning "Okay", too. Putting that "O" on a green button would reinforce that concept. AFAIK all countries use "red = stop/error, green = go/okay, yellow = warning/slow down".
They should have gone with a red but
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Colours are not universal either. In Japan the sun is red, and yellow is a shade of red. They didn't have a word for green until the 1950s, it was a shade of blue. I understand China is similar.
Years ago when I was studying Japanese our teacher asked us to open our green textbooks. The textbook was yellow though. The Japanese word for green, midori, doesn't mean the same thing as the English word for green.
So to Japanese people yellow is green, but the sun which we think of as yellow is red.
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Virtual +1 informative.
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>Who in their right mind updates Apple products immediately?
Me. All my files are backed up and accessible.
The machine is under warrantee. If they brick it, they fix it.
So I get to see the new bling (amounting to rounded corners on the icons) with a small risk of something bad happening.
I don't have to be out of my mind to pick to see the new icons. It's just a computer.
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Re: Still on Mojave (Score:2)
And where on 4chan did you dig up this bullshit tidbit?
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wut.
In 20+ of servicing macbooks I've never once seen this.
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Assuming you have AppleCare, you have two years of warranty coverage. Do you buy a new Mac every 2 years? That seems a little.... excessive...
My last macbook was a 2013 model. My current is a 2020. I buy a top spec model and use it for as long as it's worth keeping.
I got the new one because I had reasons for wanting the extra computational power and memory. Also I needed an Intel CPU for the specific crypto instructions available which ARM does not. So this might be the end of the line for Intel macs. In the absence of Intel based macs, I'll be switching to Linux based PC laptops for my daily driver.
I've been using Macs since they first existed a
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You're not alone on that strategy. I typically keep a macbook around 7 years, after buying the highest end model I can. The last upgrade I made was because I had the very last macbook without USB-3 and it was getting annoying when the mobo finally died.
If you're only upgrading every 7 years or so, paying more is worth it. Most 5 year old windows laptops are torture to use. (unless again, you buy top of the line, but that's so much less common for windows users, wanting to take advantage of discount hardw
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Another bonus of the 7 year hop is that I got to completely miss the crappy keyboard era. My wife got one with the bugger-all-travel keys - I'm not a fan.
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I managed to miss the entire M2-drive era. My previous MBP had a 2.5" that I upgraded from 250 to 500 to 1TB/ssd, and this new one has 2T on the mobo. That should last me until it's time to get a new one though... I hope!
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Assuming you have AppleCare, you have two years of warranty coverage. Do you buy a new Mac every 2 years? That seems a little.... excessive...
I buy a new one every couple of years, while at the same time trading in an older Mac. I usually get ~800-$1000 depending on the model, which goes towards the purchase of a new one.
Trading in also works for all your other i devices. I recently got $70 for a 5 year old iPad mini 3.
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A warranty won't compensate you for your lost time. It could take Apple a week or four to fix your computer - they will be swamped if it's a bad update.
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I still have plenty of machines to work on. Linux boxes, work laptops, my old macbook, etc. I can still access the files, because they always end up backed up.
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Wish I had resisted - Big Sur is making a complete mess of screens layed out on an extended screen (a separate large screen for dev work)
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I've got the "Install MacOS Big Sur" window in my system tray right now...
Why? For no good reason I can work out, today, my mac seems to have trouble keeping the HDMI working. That is, every so often the screen will blank or go "multicolour snow" for a moment and then come back. Or sometimes it'll just go black and stay that way until I unplug and re-insert. Oh, and my mouse keeps stopping too - needs an unplug/re-insert to get a couple more hours out of it. All this on a machine that was working just fine
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screen will blank or go "multicolour snow" for a moment and then come back. Or sometimes it'll just go black and stay that way until I unplug and re-insert
Never seen this on a Mac, but this is generally an HDCP negotiation issue. Try a different HDMI cord.
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Worth a try - thanks for the tip, I'll give it a whirl (although right now it seems to be behaving itself - the mouse too).
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Automatic updating. (Score:2)
The problem is some people have their computers set to "automatically update," which is usually used to just patch the current OS with the latest security fixes. But the setting under the System Preferences for software updates, by default, displays a single control which toggles updating both security updates and major software updates. (You have to select "Advanced..." to toggle those settings separately.)
Given the number of Apple users who buy Mac machines for their apparent simplicity, this is one place
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It's not just Apple. Lots of companies have this problem. For major versioss, I wait. For minor updates like security fixes, I usually upgrade ASAP. However, I always make back ups before doing any upgrades no matter what!
removing an IC chip? rosmann repair will do that (Score:3)
removing an IC chip? rosmann repair will do that for you and make and big deal about how they will fix it for $$$ less then the apple stores buy an new system idea.
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removing an IC chip? rosmann repair will do that for you and make and big deal about how they will fix it for $$$ less then the apple stores buy an new system idea.
I find it interesting that a chip that runs HDMI data flow might be causing the lockout. Could the problem simply be a content protection lockout happening in the core boot process because the chipset is giving a false reading to the system and the system then suspends operation of the device to stop any possible pirating of precious digital content?
If there is some new content protection tacked on to the OS core boot then I certainly would brick Apple for good and switch to a real computer that I can serv
Re: removing an IC chip? rosmann repair will do th (Score:1)
Removing hardware is hardly a longterm fix (Score:2)
After all, that hardware wasn't placed on the board just for aesthetic reasons or fun, it obviously had a function which has now been lost. It might be acceptable as a quick fox to access data on an encrypted system but thats all.
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A quick brown fox?
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Does the HDMI port still work though?
Could be a security failure. Apple make it impossible for 3rd parties to replace the fingerprint sensors in iPhones until they were forced to relent, by looking at the fingerprint sensor serial number and refusing to trust it if it didn't match the one in the security chip.
Maybe they are trying to detect replaced HDMI chips. They are a not uncommon point of failure, since they can be hit by shocks when an HDMI cable is plugged in. Removing the chip makes the check fail e
... removing an IC chip for the HDMI port ... (Score:3, Funny)
"An engineer investigating one customer's problems appeared to have resolved the issue after removing an IC chip for the HDMI port...".
Did he use pliers? I call bullshit.
Re:... removing an IC chip for the HDMI port ... (Score:4, Informative)
It's a sad, but unsurprising indictment on how far the average technical aptitude on /. has fallen, when people are unaware of even the most basic, hobbyist level tools and processes around electronic repair. [ytimg.com]
Hot air rework station. You should go look it up. [google.com]
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It's a sad, but unsurprising indictment on how far the average technical aptitude on /. has fallen, when people are unaware of even the most basic, hobbyist level tools and processes around electronic repair. [ytimg.com]
Hot air rework station. You should go look it up. [google.com]
This. I was out in my shop one day (pre-COVID) and one of our neighborhood kids just stood at the door and stared and stared as I did something relatively minor with my cheap, garage sale and Craigslist collection of tools. The kid's mind was really blown when I proceeded to clean up and put everything away. So many people don't know how to do anything for themselves, and they don't take care of their stuff.
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Did he use pliers? I call bullshit.
Pliers don't have the needed force; obviously vise-grips were used.
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Vice grips might be overkill. A few minutes in a pneumatic paint shaker should loosen the parts sufficiently to use pliers.
2013 & 2014 is old tech to Apple (Score:2)
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Apple says that they're supported, that should be enough. Either Apple have tested that it works or they are prepared to fix/replace systems that the update bricks.
The pessimist in me says: wait three weeks for most of the issues to get resolved and then do a full Time Machine backup before letting it loose.
If a large enough group of people are not intending to upgrade we'll eventually see the "Windows 7" scenario with old editions of macOS lurking around, not receiving security updates, and joining botnets
awaiting comments before I upgrade (Score:2)
Eventually I will be happy to change to an Apple Silicon machine but preferably skipping the just released generation, after all my machine is still ok.
Catalina works smoothly and I plan to wait for comments of people with a similar machine as mine before upgrading to Big Sur. It would be awful if it suddenly became slow.
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we'll eventually see the "Windows 7" scenario with old editions of macOS lurking around, not receiving security updates, and joining botnets just because they can.
Guy with a repair business here. I come across Macs still on High Sierra all the time. Inevitably, the customer has no clue that it was supposed to receive updates.
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The benefit of HDMI to the user is one thin cable with one decent connector for carrying audio+video to your entertainment system.
The HDCP part is unfortunate. Luckily, it is relatively cheap to strip it.
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I bought a heavy long cable, it's at least 25' but I want to say it's longer than that even. And I'm actually using it now because everything else is in storage. HDMI is a hell of a cable. But most of the time I just use dinky ones, and they've been fine for me.
Late 2013 or early 2014 MacBook Pro users? (Score:1)
Seems like there are a lot of poor Apple fanboys.... and fangirls. That is a big surprise. How could Apple ever have factored that in their testing?
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> Seems like there are a lot of poor Apple fanboys.... and fangirls. That is a big surprise. How could Apple ever have factored that in their testing?
Apple is doing its best to get rid of these deplorables but some of them bitterly cling to their functional keyboards.
ok slashdot, how would you prevent this if you wor (Score:2)
worked at apple?
i would start with a room full of old macbooks.... whats next?
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and what would be the details of the testing? would a person be sitting in front of the computer, trying different apps?
would it be automated? would a physical robot be involved?
well... (Score:1)
you're holding it wrong!
Stopped at Mojave (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stopped at Mojave (Score:4, Informative)
And that's cool. However, if (like me) one uses Turbotax, they are stuck upgrading every 2 years, as Intuit seems to have a deal with Apple, requiring the most recent os "or else"...
Re:Stopped at Mojave (Score:4, Insightful)
If stuck on Turbotax you could run it in a Windows VM you otherwise never touch. Given my loathing of Windows but having use for some Windows applications VMs work great for my use case. They're portable, I can revert to snapshots if something breaks, and they cost me nothing.
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Apple has already stated that they won't be putting Bootcamp on the new ARM systems, and Windows for ARM isn't available to non-OEMs. Or will VMware be able to run a non-ARM OS on a ARM chipset?
Re: Stopped at Mojave (Score:2)
VMWare isn't an emulator, so currently won't run Intel Windows binaries.
It's also quite annoying that ARM builds of Windows aren't available on MSDN
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Rosetta 2 is purportedly able to run any non-ARM binaries. I don't know if this will extend to VMWare and the likely deep APIs that it will require. Since nobody has these machines in front of them yet, we can only speculate. But Apple is claiming that the machines run Intel binaries faster than Intel Macs can run them. If VMWare does run and function normally, that would bode well for Windows VMs on Apple Silicon.
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Edit: disregard that, I pluck clocks!
https://appleinsider.com/artic... [appleinsider.com]
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There's an in-development version of Parallels that will run on the M1 chip.
Bricking older hardware is just (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s been years... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh they've added features all right (Score:2)
Mostly to lock yourself out of your own system. Want to change the fecking logon wallpaper in Mojave or catalina? Boot into recovery mode, disable SIP, copy your jpg over to a system dir, renable SIP, reboot. FFS.
And as far as I know in Big Sur its so much extra hassle even than that its probably not worth the bother.
And there are other annoyances such as not being able to trace system programs in a debugger to see what they're doing even as root with SIP disabled. All for our "protection". Yeah, sure, that
Just update the wallpaper, (Score:5, Funny)
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Typical Slashdot half arsed solutions. You also need to somehow reduce the contrast on the UI so your buttons are harder to see. Then it would a true replica.
I also upgraded... (Score:5, Insightful)
to Fedora. After couple of years using a MacBook I've switched positions inside my company and was able to go back to Linux. What a relieve! I was using the latest MacBook and it was still slow as hell. LibreOffice opens immediately on my Linux now but Word/Excel on OS X would 5-10 seconds to simply show the splash screen. And the UX... I hate the OS X philosophy of 'this is how you should use it because we say it's better'. No, let me configure stuff. On Linux I finally have the window focus, windows list and virtual desktop acting the way I like, not the way some 'expert' working for Apple likes. Immediately my work became way less irritating. Oh, and my previous company MacBook was replaces because of swallen battery. Nice for a '{insert insane amout of money}' laptop. Big Sur? Fortunately, I don't care any more.
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Every Apple laptop battery I have owned has swollen within two years of using it. Every third-party laptop battery I have owned ran for at least 3-5 years, degraded very slowly, and never swelled. That is why I laugh when Apple says that one of the reasons they seal the batteries in their devices is to prevent installation of unreliable and unsafe batteries. It's also reason #77 that I no longer buy Apple devices.
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Same, I've never seen a swollen battery before. A lot of people use MacBooks at my company and I've seen many of them change laptops because of that issue. Desktop support is no longer surprised when they see it.
On the other hand, couple months ago I've change the battery in my Dell. Funny how easy it is in a proper 'Pro' laptop.
More forced obsolescence? (Score:1)
You idiot (Score:4, Funny)
You failed to upgrade to the latest Mac. Your membership in the Apple cult is hereby revoked with extreme prejudice.
I had a similar experience (Score:3, Insightful)
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Server app quit working too... (Score:2)
...and conveniently there's no update available from the app store.