It's not "bricked" if you can fix it in Recovery Mode.
Still bad that it's happening, but the term "bricked" is thrown around so flippantly these days. If a piece of tech is bricked, it's not recoverable at all.
Still bad that it's happening, but the term "bricked" is thrown around so flippantly these days. If a piece of tech is bricked, it's not recoverable at all.
> No power at all. I tried SMC and PRAM reset but sadly was unable to do either since my computer won’t even turn on.
[0]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/warning-macos-catalina-...
[1]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/warning-macos-catalina-...
If so, maybe a DFU restore is needed.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple ships Configurator iOS someday, but today is not that day.
Still sucks, just a bit less. not really different than an iPhone, except that you can rebuild those on Windows (for now).
The checkra1n team recently showed that all Macs with a T2 chip are vulnerable to checkm8 exploit used to jailbreak iPhones, and this could persist for a while due to the T2 chip staying on between application processor reboots.
This allows override of mic disconnect (except on the newest models which switched to hardware disconnect), Secure Boot/Firmware Password, and allows you to bypass Apple's signing of Intel ME firmware, TB3 firmware, and CPU microcode. Whether or not there is still Intel signing after that is unknown, but there are already some sort of issues with the host key being leaked on that. The one useful feature I can think of is allowing SSD replacement (you still have to find a way to resolder ofc) and Touch Bar customization.
I think the most likely attack vector for this is an evil maid style attack where corrupted T2 firmware is loaded that rewrites the contents of the SSD while macOS is running to launch further exploit code on that platform.
The one thing not to worry about is if you have FileVault turned on with a password, that still can't be cracked because your password is not stored anywhere on the device. But the BitLocker-style automatic encryption with no password that just locks the SSD to that specific T2 chip isn't useful anymore.
Took a day, but all's well now.
Glad it helped.
No: There’s no opportunity to use FileVault recovery keys when you’re doing a DFU on a T2 Mac. If you have to DFU, your data is lost.
(edited to clarify per reply)
It’s not failure, it’s secure by design to prevent attackers/governments from stealing your files without consent.
Under DFU brick and reset circumstances, the private key is gone, because otherwise an attacker could just upload a hacked firmware via DFU and access all your files.
I assume the installer uses a different process that performs a DFU upgrade-in-place that safely manages the handoff using signed code and such, but that’s not the process we get as a last restore described above.
If you don’t have off-device backups, you’re accepting the risk of losing all your data at any time due to any number of possible failures (software and hardware). Not much use getting upset about this specific case.
Computer went to sleep after the update. This was on Friday. Haven't been able to do any kind of thing on it. Trackpad 'clicks' but no screen, not touchbar, nothing (2018 Macbook Pro).
Called apple, they tld me it had to go a store, unfortunately where I live, due to quarantine there are no shops available to pick it, and we aren't allowed to drive outside our district.
Will try the apple configurator idea someone posted below and will report back. Just need to find a cable that supports both power and data that is USB a to USB c.
Tomorrow will call a close enough store that seems to be (stated on their website) doing pick-ups and see if they can come and pick it.
My main concern now is they will try to try and charge 1000 or so euros for a repair and I will have to eat the cost as I can't really ask for a replacement one from company or friends since everyone is stuck at home
Probably a bigger issue isn’t that they’re a single laptop failure away from collapse, the bigger problem is that replacing a laptop right now would be unusually difficult.
“A small number of machines” is not what we are talking about. We’re talking about one single consumer-grade laptop that would collapse the entire business forever.
Now, you really can’t buy another laptop same day.
For some consumers, if recovery mode doesn't work that might be the end of line.
However, there are more advanced users that can access the storage via another system and fix it there, hook up via serial port or JTAG and flash new firmware, or even desolder and replace chips.
On the far other end of the spectrum, there's going to be people that consider "doesn't show the normal UI after I press the power button" as bricked.
I'd like to keep it this way even to the general lay person. Because if you need hardware the barrier to entry goes up significantly.
Agreed that 'bricked' is not the right term here.
From Dictionary.app that comes standard with the Mac: "a smartphone or other electronic device that has completely ceased to function"
But because they're "captured usage", they're generally what people would understand by the term.
"Literally" is often used when the subject is metaphorical, but that's not the same thing as it meaning "metaphorically". If you took the "literally" away, it would still be understood to be metaphorical - the "literally" is intended to strengthen. It's the normal sense of literally, used hyperbolically.
In the same way, when someone says "you left me waiting for days" we don't say that "days" sometimes means tens of minutes.
The Sonos "recycle mode" bricks the device. If same effect is produced by a bad capacitor (rather than a deliberately-blown efuse), it's just broken.
>For some consumers, if recovery mode doesn't work that might be the end of line.
If you want to go by that rule, for a large number of people simply getting a virus would mean their computer is bricked. I think it's safe to assume "bricked" means it's a hardware level issue.
Failing to make a back up of the software on a device which you're attempting to hack and subsequently destroying hardly seems relevant to an auto update locking you out. That's more like changing your password and forgetting it, or back in the day formatting your hard drive without a copy of XP to re-install. I don't know which phone you're referring to, but every phone I've rooted has been salvageable.
Especially since countries other than mine have called out a complete lockdown. You can't just walk into an Apple store right now or call a techie friend over.
Chrome and Firefox, as well as Microsoft, have announced that they will only distribute stability fixes to prevent people working from home from having trouble.
In any normal year, I'd say "shit happens" (or "that's the risk of buying Apple", given that they don't even offer to do pickup of your >€2000 machine like most businesses selling laptops in that price range do). Right now, any disruption in computer performance is debilitating.
Apple needs to confirm these cases ASAP and/or pull the update for the devices affected. Apple isn't the only one releasing bricking updates by the way, Samsung has pulled an update for their A70 phone because of bricking issues two days ago.
In this case, you can probably recover through the DFU mode and reinstalling Bridge OS. But this requires another Mac, which some people may not have, and at least some tech know-how.
According to postmodernism, everything is like that.
Maybe, but this sounds really strange to my ears. I think for me the difference between bricked and non bricked is the expense of the repair, and maybe if it's more than the value of the device. If the wiring in your house is all melted after lightning strike then it's bricked. If you total your car it's bricked.
And yes, there's a difference between a soft brick and a hard brick, and it depends on your ability to repair.
Getting my phone stuck in a bootloop is usually a soft brick, but my Pixel went into one a few years ago for no apparent reason (likely mobo failure) and that was beyond my capacity to repair or diagnose, so it's bricked.
Hardware errors are hard bricks.
This isn't a difficult delineation.
So flashing new firmware to fix the problem, not bricked.
Requiring soldering stuff and replacing hardware, it's bricked.
Otherwise, as you said, 'bricked' can mean almost anything. So what's the point of using a word without any particular meaning?
Not all people own more than one system.
If it was my only computer, and depend on it to do work and earn my living, and it broke, I would be terribly upset. Especially these days with the quarantine.
It makes a mockery of the idea of advice. Imagine your parents calling you and telling you that their machine is bricked. Well, I guess they must buy a new one and the old must go to electronic recycling. No need for a diagnostic of any kind, it's bricked.
Linguistic descriptivism will be the death of communication and standards. Only pushing back at the creep will allow people to discuss anything technical. Imagine the trend should it overtake medicine. If a certain kind of stroke is suspected, the patient should take aspirin right away. No, aspirin-aspirin, not ibuprofen. Then you have someone who says, "Well, ibuprofen is an aspirin sure!"
Even within a field, people may have slightly different interpretations of what a word means. Take consumer electronics. Say someone plugged in the wrong power supply and blew an inductor. If you don't know what a power supply filter is, it's garbage. If you do know what's going on, it's a simple repair. Now look at the case of a bad firmware update, where the device cannot reach recovery mode. Someone with a knowledge of embedded software development may know how to fix that, particularly if they have connections with the vendor. Most people will consider it damaged beyond repair. The thing is, you can have one person who is knowledgeable about software and another about electronics having entirely different interpretations of what bricked means. The only real commonality in the definition is, "I cannot repair it." For someone with negligible knowledge about how consumer electronics, that is going to have a very broad application.
Personally, I think that bricked means that it can only be repaired with specialized tools (including soldering irons or JTAG interfaces). But hey, I'm sure a lot of people would beg to differ.
EDIT: missing don't.
Machinery standards at least define this mechanically as a screwdriver or above. The software equivalent may be a USB cable.
(FWIW: If the terms are to be interpreted relative to the device owner's competence level, we also need to prosecute people saying "You're dead to me" for murder)
“I bricked my phone and had to spend a whole day reading obscure guides to three different levels of embedded software before I could get it working again” feels like a perfectly valid sentence. You can fix a bricked thing, just like you can fix a broken thing, but both require some investment of time and possibly the use of tools that you won’t usually find outside the hands of specialists.
imo "Bricked" means you turned your piece of electronics into a brick, it cannot be recovered. Otherwise as mentioned before, it's just "broken", which can be recovered from in most cases.
A bricked device usually can be recovered using only software tools and sometimes a special cable. Sometimes those tools or cables are only possessed by the manufacturer, which frustrates consumers and makes it seem like the devices are unrecoverable, but they’re not.
A broken device, on the other hand, can’t be recovered using software tools or a special cable because it contains broken parts that must be repaired or replaced.
A bricked device has a slight chance of recovery, if you have the tools/skills/training. It is a brick until that repair with high applitude is completed. Something that is broke doesn't mean it is functional or not, just not at a perfectly working condition to worse. it might be repaired by doing a reset of a device, or something more advanced.
This is from my experience dealing with non-technical people who are mechanically inclined, but not technically inclined. they will call with a "broke" device that just needs a reset since they have too many users in a system all attempting to run the same device on different things. (Sorry keeping vague to keep me out of hot water). They will also call in with something "bricked" because the device won't function due to a damaged USB port, and they don't have the skill set/components to solder a port on something electronic. And then further down the scale it is a paperweight when it won't boot and is a piece of hardware they hate.
The threads here show that even highly technical people disagree on what conditions should be considered bricked versus broken. To a non-technical person whose device isn't working, however, there is no practical difference.
I would refine my definition to be that a "bricked" device is something that has occurred via a failed software update making the device inoperable to all but the tiniest subset of users.
It’s fair to say “bricked” is a sub-category of “broke” but if something is software repairable then it isn’t bricked.
Also aspirin and ibuprofen are very different chemicals. I wouldn’t advise conflating the two. The resulting effect could be worse than the brick/broke problem we are discussing ;)
The term unbricking also exists, which directly contradicts the idea that a bricked device cannot be recovered.
For example - years ago, NVIDIA got in some hot water over some of their mobile GPUs getting so toasty some of the solder points broke, leading to bricked systems. If you were the adventurous sort, you could heat the laptop enough to reflow the solder and end up with an unbricked system, but that's not an approach most people are going to take.
However, I think the situation you might find here is that, if you define "bricked" as a situation which is literally unrepairable, almost nothing is ever bricked. Which similarly makes it a not very useful term. Bricking would be a term exclusive to devices which have been...exposed to an intense EMP, or run through an oven. Situations which, while they may occasionally happen, happen so rarely that no one would ever use the word.
You can always bring it to a repair-service.
I'd say it is "bricked" if repairing it costs more than buying a new one; i.e. it's a total loss situation.
There were some "unbricking" guides but those usually required hardware voodoo, soldering, etc., things that most people couldn't do.
Now it's a clickbait term that has lost its original meaning of "you now own an expensive paper weight".
It requires a separate, recent Mac, involves arcane combinations of specific ports, keys, and timings, relies on luck and voodoo, and ultimately may not even work.
More generally, any issue with a computer can be fixed by a sufficiently skilled and determined user - maybe with some data loss. Even a broken firmware might be fixed by writing a new one, cracking the authentication mechanism, and building a custom rig to flash it to the chip.
It's all a matter of degrees and how much users can be expected to do which makes defining exactly what "bricked" means very difficult.
Seems pretty standard (and it's how I use the term[s]).
Bricking does not mean unrecoverable. That’s why the term unbricking exists.
It’s absolutely ok to call something that most regular users will be unable to fix on their own and in the meanwhile their device won’t even turn on “bricking”.
It just changes the noun brick into a verb. So if a laptop has bricked, it means it’s like a brick now (useless)
I kinda like "cold bricked" personally.
- soft: need some sysadmin mojo, USB adb etc.
- hard: can be fixed with soldering, physical repair of sorts.
- cold: will never again work even if you're Louis Rossman (maybe as a ship of theseus). Think CPU fried.
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/18959/doorstop
But you can't keep a door opened with a broken cell phone, so they had to invent a new mobile-friendly term "bricked".
For a mainframe or minicomputer, you could say "monolithed" or "bouldered".
Anyway, the "bricked" expression is more commonly used in smartphones and PlayStation Portable (PSP) than laptops. Then it makes more sense when considering the size of the devices.
I think it's also at least in part more commonly applied to those types of devices because they're generally more locked down than a laptop, leading users to risk bricking by trying jailbreaking them. Installing a custom OS on most laptops just isn't nearly as risky in terms of bricking potential.
After that the phones would be, essentially, a brick.
I did not have the technology to fix it - a JTAG connector and software to drive a reinstallation of what I assumed was the firmware.