Ah well...
A problem identified and then a solution offered in a week or so.
And Jasper predictably extracts the urine.
Apple has released an urgent fix for a problem that temporarily bricked a number of fanbois' Macbooks. Apple customers wailed last week after an update hobbled some users' machines. People using Macbook Airs from mid 2011 claimed the update wrought havoc on their pride and joy, turning that expensive silver machine into a …
The question is more how could this happen in the first place? Apple controls the hardware and the software, and presumably there are only a handful of different versions ever released (unless they silently change stuff under the hood when it is the "same" model) It should be pretty easy for them to test, so it is curious how such a thing could happen in the first place.
Rumours abound that the machines weren't bricked, they just took a couple of hours to boot up after the update.
I say just" (in, er, air quotes? you know what I mean), obviously....a two hour wait for a boot splash would be rather worrying, so it wouldn't surprise me if people fiddled with the power and had done more damage - although if the firmware had been applied before people started switching things off and on again, it *should* be OK. It's when you whip the power out while it's still writing the EFI update that you get real problems AFAIK.
Still, the question about QA is a good one - Apple need to learn what caused this, and explain how this got through the net.
Not that that will happen - not when there's this lovely rug that contains all the other 'dubious' update issues, slow turnaround of bug fixes, etc to pop it under.
Steven R
Yesterday I received three 2011 MacBook Airs, having seen them available for a bargain price and decided to help out a charity. I'm not a support person so having multiple of the same computer in my control has never happened before. I therefore may not have proceeded in the most intelligent fashion, criticise as you must.
I decided to run all available software updates on all three, which were otherwise seemingly identically configured — each completely clean with the SSD given a volume name of 'Mavericks 10.9.2', implying a recent wipe and install though I doubt that will have had any effect on the firmware.
All three have now been updated, including to EFI 2.9.1, and work perfectly.
The only oddity was that all of them kept presenting the update as available even after it had been installed. In all three cases I installed the update last night and then again this morning, with software update now finally silenced. In one case I attempted to install twice last night, with the second go downloading and rebooting but not attempting to install anything. In the other two cases I stopped after the first try last night.
So installation still seems to have some issues, but only so as to create extremely minor inconveniences — nothing bricked — and may just have been some sort of propagation problem as 2.9.1 replaces 2.9.
The only oddity was that all of them kept presenting the update as available even after it had been installed.
That happens to me all the time on my Macbook Pro. The update will just reinstall itself over and over every time I run updates, if I let it.
Kudos to Apple for getting a fix out quickly (though I really wish they'd talk to people more before turning up whenever they feel like and handing down a fix from on high). Thing is: if Airs really were bricked by the previous update, how do they go about getting this one?
I recently reported a 'self-distruction' bug in the EFI firmware for 13" mac air books.....
When I say 'self destruction' I literally mean the whole machine.......
The bug puts the computer CPU in 100% mode whilst the cover is fully closed & with the 'apple' lid light off........
So if you then pop the machine into a computer bag It makes an excellent winter warmer, either the machine destroys its main board...(since the air intake is blocked by the bag fabric) or the battery runs out, depending on your luck.
Maybe the initial update was to fix 'that' bug........