Home / Technology / Mac Studio Bricked by MacOS Upgrade: A $3,700 Nightmare
Mac Studio Bricked by MacOS Upgrade: A $3,700 Nightmare
2 Feb
Summary
- Mac Studio M3 Ultra experienced a catastrophic failure after a MacOS upgrade.
- A DFU firmware revive/restore process was needed to recover the bricked machine.
- The incident highlights concerns about MacOS upgrade stability and reliability.
A recent Mac Studio M3 Ultra purchase turned into a costly nightmare when a MacOS Tahoe upgrade bricked the machine. After approximately an hour of use, the user initiated the upgrade, which subsequently caused the computer to reboot to a black screen, unresponsive to any recovery attempts. This critical failure rendered the $3,700 computer unusable.
Investigation revealed a bug where the installer attempted to load the MacOS Tahoe driver for the Apple Neural Engine, but a hardware check failure aborted the process. While typical rollbacks occurred for some users, this instance led to a complete system failure.
The only viable solution was a DFU (Direct Firmware Update) firmware revive/restore process. This requires a second Mac, a specific USB-C cable, and accessing a dedicated DFU port on the affected machine. The user attempted both 'Revive' and 'Restore' options, which initially failed.
After the DFU attempts proved unsuccessful, a final reboot miraculously brought the Mac Studio back online. The user expressed significant hesitation towards future MacOS upgrades, citing this experience and comparing it unfavorably to Linux stability. While Apple has reportedly addressed the issue, the user's experience suggests potential lingering problems with the upgrade pathway, especially for powerful machines.
