If you’re an owner of an older MacBook Pro, you may want to hold off on updating to Apple’s latest version of macOS. An increasing number of users are reporting that the Big Sur update is bricking their devices, many of which were produced in late 2013 and mid 2014.
“I’m getting a black screen with backlight when I power on, can’t enter recovery mode, no startup sound, nothing,” wrote one user on r/MacOS. “Not impressed at all. Apple support tried getting me to reset the PRAM, SMC, etc., and when that didn’t work, they asked me to take it for in-person servicing.”
“I’m experiencing a similar issue,” warned another on the MacRumors forum. “It got stuck on a black screen during installation so I restarted my MBP. Now it won’t show boot options, recovery mode, nothing. The backlight comes on and that’s it.”
“[…] the screen was black – no status bar, no nothing, but I could tell the LED was on,” an additional post on Apple’s support forum reads. “Nothing would wake it up so I eventually held the power button to force a shutdown. Now it won’t boot. Tried SMC, PRAM, holding shift, option keys, recovery mode etc etc. Tried all many many times.”
Replies on the MacRumors forums suggest that the problem may be even more widespread, with other, newer Mac models (e.g., 2019 iMac) being affected. In any case, users will definitely want to wait for Apple to release a fix before applying the Big Sur update.