iPadOS 18 bricked my iPad M4

HermanJr wrote:

If the iPad like mine is completely dead, none of the mentioned steps are working.

So the question is legitimate, how did he get it up again.

An Apple Store may have access to debugging and repair tools that most people don't have at home. E.g. there are scenarios in which reviving an Apple Silicon Mac may require the assistance of a second Mac, running Apple Configurator 2.

In the case of M4 iPad Pros and iPadOS 18, the impression that I get from news reports is that some of the iPad Pros got bricked so thoroughly that Apple had to replace them outright. Reviving them, if possible, was beyond the level of what even Apple Stores were equipped to do.

Servant of Cats wrote:

It's a fact of life that on devices that have firmware, corrupted firmware updates, or bugs in firmware updates, can result in turning customer hardware into a "brick". An update that "bricks" customer hardware is one of a firmware development team's worst nightmares; doubly so for the software quality assurance team that tested that update before it went out to the public.

This does not mean that

Vendors "brick" hardware intentionally. (One exception: Activation Lock. If the owner of a lost or stolen iPhone wants to "brick" of a stolen or lost phone, Activation Lock can help the owner accomplish their• goal.)

• Vendors are waiting for the opportunity to "brick" your device at any time

• Third parties necessarily have any ability to "brick" your device at all. (On an iPhone that is not jail-broken, only Apple's software, itself, has the ability to install an iOS update. Apps don't have the privileges that it would take to mess with the firmware.)

But conspiracy theories are so much more fun! And so on-trend.

I took my bricked IPad Pro M4 to the Genius Bar yesterday ( 23 Sept ) It had died last week during the IOS 18 update and was completely unresponsive with a black screen

The Apple technician tried all the usual things to get it to respond but nothing worked. He then tried putting it on the shops fast charge system and noticed a brief flash. Connecting again to the computer then allowed the recovery process to start and an Apple was displayed on the screen. A full restoration was then possible and it is now back to normal but with IOS 17.7

The battery charge was 1%

The conjecture is that after the 18 upgrade failed the machine continued doing something but locked out any interaction. When the power failed it was no longer frozen but needed a bit of a power kick to get it going

Whether this will work with other bricked machines is a matter of conjecture ….. but worth a careful go

My issue is not that my m4 ipad pro is bricked but rather how Apple is handling this whole mess… It’s been over a week now, no official explanation/apology, they pulled the 18 also no explanation on that, no possible timeline given or any instructions. As I said it’s been over a week now and we are in the absolute darkness! Extremely poor handling of a crisis on Apple’s side… Pure failure of a movement…

archy999 wrote:

My issue is not that my m4 ipad pro is bricked but rather how Apple is handling this whole mess… It’s been over a week now, no official explanation/apology, they pulled the 18 also no explanation on that, no possible timeline given or any instructions. As I said it’s been over a week now and we are in the absolute darkness! Extremely poor handling of a crisis on Apple’s side… Pure failure of a movement…

Apple might not know the cause of the problem yet – just that the issue is serious enough, and has been seen often enough, to make it worth temporarily pausing the iPadOS 18 rollout.

CNET (September 18, 2024) – Apple's iPadOS 18 Update Is Bricking M4 iPad Pro Models

"The company told CNET the issue is affecting iPad Pro models with Apple's newer M4 processor. "We have temporarily removed the iPadOS 18 update for M4 iPad Pro models as we work to resolve an issue that is impacting a small number of devices," Apple said in a statement."

If I remember correctly, Apple told a couple of Mac news sites the same thing, word for word. However, I do not see anything on the Apple Newsroom (press release) site mentioning the pause in the iPadOS 18 rollout.

This iOS 18 update bricked my iPad as well. It was working perfectly fine up until iOS 18. I have a generation seven iPad and it worked great… now they’re saying it’s a hardware issue. I think that’s BS because it didn’t have a hardware issue until iOS 18. They are unable to fix it and suggest I buy a new iPad. This is the first time I have been so disappointed in Apple.

It's like it has a dead battery. Buttons don't do anything. Plugged it into a thunderbolt dock with a monitor and nothing.

If the iPad like mine is completely dead, none of the mentioned steps are working.

So the question is legitimate, how did he get it up again.

My Ipad pro M1 has flickering multiple black lines after the Ipad os 18 update, seems like the new OS is released without proper testing of the OS which is giving us these problems.

archy999 wrote:

My issue is not that my m4 ipad pro is bricked but rather how Apple is handling this whole mess

What happened when you contacted Apple about it?

It wouldn’t let neither… it’s cold stone dead

See this article.

Apple Pulls iPadOS 18 for M4 iPad Pro After Bricking Complaints

I have an iPad Pro M4 and updated to iPadOS 18 without issue. The above article suggests (but does say for certain) that those iPads previously using iPadOS 17.7 may have this issue.

I'm not sure what version of iOS was on my iPad since I downloaded the beta iPad OS18 shortly after starting it up. The beta version (as it turns out) became the RC version (22A3354) and was installed on my iPad 2024 M4 without issue. After reading this thread and others, I can only assert that some pre-condition (either existing version of iOS), or there is a hardware issue with some iPads 2024 M4. It is peculiar that the issue seemed to only impact a small percentage of these machines, I do hope Apple provides some detailed explanation of what was in fact the root cause of this issue.

Update: My device will be replaced with a new one.

I went to the store where I bought it, and they sent it to their repair department. I just received an email from them saying that the entire device is unresponsive and needs to be replaced.