[mattchamb]

Not sure if related, but my 2020 M1 macbook air bricked a week or so after upgrading to Sonoma. I was suspicious if this was related to the update. Luckily the logic board was replaced for free under warranty laws here, though it put me off switching to iphone which I was a day away from doing.

[bscphil]

Upgrades bricking hardware seems to be a common failure mode for macOS. For example Big Sur bricked a bunch of 2013 and 2014 MBPs: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/macos-big-sur-update-br...

I was affected by this and like many users the problem was fixed after replacing the I/O board. In my case, I did it myself using a $10 part from Ebay since the machine was well out of warranty at that point.

[miles]

From comments #736 and #747 attached to the forum post you kindly shared, it sounds like simply disconnecting and reconnecting the I/O board may be sufficient (found those comments linked in #831):

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-br...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-br...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-br...

[fifteen1506]

And this is why there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop -- no-one wants to have to depend on forum posts to fix these kind of issues.

/troll

[coldtea]

Why the "/troll"? You're 100% right non-ironically: the problem being that on Linux the need to consult forum posts to fix these kind of issues is way more frequent than in macOS.

[bscphil]

By the standard of "do you ever need to consult forum posts to solve a problem", sure, Linux is worse than macOS. By the standard of "do you ever need to consult forum posts to fix hardware that has apparently been bricked by a software update", macOS seems to be considerably worse. At least, that's my experience. I've never had hardware damaged by Linux, which I've run almost exclusively. On the other hand the one Apple device I've ever owned got bricked by their software update.

I can't say I've heard of that happening to people on Linux at all other than maybe early days of Xorg. Damage (reversible or otherwise) to hardware is extraordinarily rare on Linux, I can only think of it happening during the very early days of EFI and only under very specific conditions.

[cesarb]

> I've never had hardware damaged by Linux, which I've run almost exclusively. [...] I can't say I've heard of that happening to people on Linux at all other than maybe early days of Xorg.

There was that LG CD-ROM drive which treated a CD-RW command (which it should ignore or reject since it's not a CD-RW drive) as a firmware upload command. When a newer Linux kernel started using that command, these drives got bricked (source: https://lwn.net/Articles/55537/ and https://web.archive.org/web/20041204072839/http://www.mandra...).

[umanwizard]

> macOS seems to be considerably worse

Most users will just take their machine in to the Apple Store when this kind of thing happens, rather than try to fix it themselves.

[jonhohle]

This is anecdotal, but my last “corporate job” was the closest to thing to shrink-wrapped software, even though it was a SaaS. Every release was meticulously documented. Any public facing UI or API change was approved the appropriate teams.

This is similar to macOS, Windows, or even FreeBSD releases. I haven’t seen any Linux distribution that has such comprehensively coordinated releases. Between systemd and the Linux kernel, I’m not sure it would be possible.

Many distros have good documentation, but, in my experience, far too often the bulk of it is in out of date wikis or forums. Perhaps this is out of date thinking and I’ve missed the train in the past 10 years.

As a counterpoint, OpenWRT has been good, but their main “product”, imho, is LuCI. Lower level issues often require vendor specific forums.

[fsflover]

On Linux it's as rare as on MacOS, if you buy preinstalled.

[coldtea]

As long as you don't do anything with it on your own.

[Wowfunhappy]

This issue in GP is unrelated to Linux, it happens on single-boot macOS.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

That's the point, I think - Linux gets derided because people say it just breaks at random and you have to wade through forums to find arcane incantations to fix it, either implying or outright stating that their favorite proprietary OS would never just blow up in your face and force you to resort to exotic troubleshooting steps. So when macos, the poster child for "user friendly", proceeds to brick the machine and require elaborate rituals to fix, it invites a certain level of snark from users pointing out that the high and mighty proprietary OSs might be just as bad as Linux after all.

Of course, whether that's valid is at minimum a question of actual frequency of problems and relative impact and effort to fix, but from a perspective of optics and emotions I understand the reaction.

[m45t3r]

I concur, the amount of times I had to Google dozens of minutes for issues happening in my work-issued Macbook Pro, and never finding answers because things are supposed to "just work" is maddening.

For one example on top of my head, sometimes I can't adjust the brightness of the monitor in the Macbook using the Notification Center (it is grayed out), but if I open the "Settings -> Displays" I can do it. Never found a solution for it after searching for a while, so I just gave up.

Or the fact that I can't enable retina or font smoothing in my 1440p monitor, so the fonts looks ugly (I got used eventually, but they still looks worse than Windows or Linux in the same monitor). I used a workaround in the past using "Better Display" to create a 4k framebuffer that was downscaled to 1440p, but this was so slow and also prone of other issues so eventually I just got used to the ugly fonts.

Another one: I have a TouchBar Macbook (again, this is a work-issued laptop), but I just want it to work as a normal keyboard: show the Function keys, if I press Fn show the shortcuts. Yep, doesn't work: while you can do this, pressing Fn while pressing some of the shortcuts in the TouchBar doesn't work. This is especially infuriating because one of the shortcuts that doesn't work is the brightness one. Go back to the first issue and you can see why this drive me mad sometimes.

[aetherspawn]

FWIW I have been using iPhones for 10+ years and not once has an update ever failed or had any issues.

But my Google Pixel phone used to brick itself all the time, I think twice in the two years I had it.

[kelnos]

I've never had an Android phone brick itself in 13 years of owning them. I have friends whose iPhones have gotten bad updates. Not sure if they were bricked, though, or if they "only" needed a factory reset to get things going again.

[Kuinox]

In the same period, 10-12 years ago, both androids and iPhones bricked themselves if there was no storage left on the device. Both needed somes bytes on boot and if they couldn't write on disk, they failed to boot.

[dehrmann]

Phones are Apple's main business. At this point, Macs are second-tier. With Google, I suspect it's their engineering practice. Google doesn't like to make engineering mistakes.

[windowsrookie]

The logic Board failed in my 2020 M1 Air as well. Opened the lid one day, and it wouldn't power on. I have AppleCare on it, otherwise it would have been a $500 repair.

About two weeks ago I'm sitting in a hotel room with the air on bed with the lid open. I grab it by the screen to slide it closer to me and the screen shatters from the light pressure of my finger.

There are instances of both these things happening to the Air all over the internet. At first I really liked the M1 Air, but it has now proven too unreliable for me.

[theodric]

My 2020 M1 Air generally requires a hard reboot if left closed and on a charger overnight, but that's been the worst of it until now (besides the rapidly degrading battery that seems calibrated to hit 79% a month after my AppleCare+ expires, while my 2015 Air's is still going strong).

Premium™

[VagabundoP]

My wife is still rocking a 2012 Mac air and uses it regularly. Apart from never rebooting it - WHAT ABUT MY TABS - its a sturdy little fellow.

Shame to hear the build quality in the latest is so poor.

[teaearlgraycold]

Seems like a weird rationale. Any manufacturer is going to have its share of software and hardware issues.