
Limited reports of Catalina installation bricking some Macs via EFI firmware - evenh
https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/24/efi-firmware/
======
miles
A few links that might help those struggling with this issue:

How to update latest MacBook pro EFI firmware manually?
[https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/311947/how-to-
upda...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/311947/how-to-update-
latest-macbook-pro-efi-firmware-manually)

Is it possible to install flash firmware update without having access to OSX?
[https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/115354/is-it-
possi...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/115354/is-it-possible-to-
install-flash-firmware-update-without-having-access-to-osx)

Flash EFI firmware update manually on a Mac(Book 5,1)
[https://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-
firmware-u...](https://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-firmware-
update-manually-on-a-macbook-51/)

Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 3)
[https://eclecticlight.co/2018/10/31/which-efi-firmware-
shoul...](https://eclecticlight.co/2018/10/31/which-efi-firmware-should-your-
mac-be-using-version-3/)

------
someonehere
Gut feeling says these are older computers where the drives are user
replaceable. I’m almost willing to bet the firmware assumed the stock drive
from Apple was in it but those users put larger platter or SSD drives in those
machines. Firmware attempted to flash and prep the stock drive to APFS for
Catalina (they possibly were not on APFS and on 10.13 with HFS+), and low and
behold they’re bricked.

I’ll Bet $20 if they put a stock Apple drive and tried again it’ll work. When
I worked Apple retail we would decline repair of machines that had the hard
drive or RAM replaced with a third party manufacturer. These machines are out
of warranty, Apple won’t likely give them the time of day unless they pay out
the nose.

~~~
evenh
I have a friend with a 13" MacBook Pro Retina (Early or Mid 2015) which this
happened to. Nothing has ever been modified on that computer, hardware wise.

