Multiple Apple devices failing ~2 years in (light use) — bad luck or pattern?

[acuturis]

I’m trying to understand whether this is just bad luck or something others are seeing too.

In our household, most of these are my wife’s devices, used very lightly (a couple of hours per week, no heavy workloads, no physical damage, never exposed to water):
• MacBook Air M2 (2022)
• iPad Pro M2 (2022)

Separately, I personally had a:
• MacBook Pro 2016

Across all of them, we’ve run into serious issues around the ~2/3-year mark.

The most recent one is the MacBook Air M2 — it completely bricked during an update to macOS 26.4. The battery was fully charged, and the update was done normally. After that, the device would not boot.

We tried recovery, but App Store / recovery options didn’t help. Apple’s conclusion was that the only solution is a logic board replacement.

What’s concerning is:
• very light usage (for the newer devices)
• no external damage
• failures still happening relatively early
• and in modern Macs, that often means full board replacement rather than repair

Also, several of my friends report having issues with their MacBooks over time, which makes me wonder if this is more common than it seems.

This experience has made us hesitant to buy Apple devices again.

At this point it feels like a pattern rather than isolated cases.

Has anyone else experienced similar reliability issues with recent Apple devices?

 

[MacCheetah3]

I have not.

• MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) doing just fine, updated to 26.4
• Mac mini (2024) isn’t yet two years old but is also fine, and also has 26.4
• When I traded in my Mac mini (M1, 2020), it was doing well — received the quoted value
• iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd gen.) (i.e., M1) also traded in to Apple without problems
• iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) on 26.4 holding steady
• iPhone X still marching on, even a couple years (I think) after a worrying off bicycle tumble
• iPhone 15 Pro Max fine on 26.4
• Apple Watches (SE 2 and SE 3) on 26.4
• Apple TV working well on 26.4

 

[throAU]

Bad luck.

I have yet to have an Apple device fail inside that time frame. the worst I have had is my MacBook Pro 2011 model having discrete GPU failure in 2015.

MacBook Pro 13" 2015 - still running
MacBook Air 13" 2020 - still going
MacBook Pro 2021 - still going.
Mac Pro 2013 - still going
iPad mini 1st gen - still powers up and works but it's useless. 😀
2x Original AppleTV 4k units - still working and in active use.

 

[Mike Boreham]

The most recent one is the MacBook Air M2 — it completely bricked during an update to macOS 26.4. The battery was fully charged, and the update was done normally. After that, the device would not boot.

We tried recovery, but App Store / recovery options didn’t help. Apple’s conclusion was that the only solution is a logic board replacement.

Many reports of M1 and M2 MacBooks bricked by 26.4. Solution seems to be DFU mode and reinstalling 26.3.1 NOT 26.4. Also reports of Apple saying new logic board needed. EG This post and the rest of that thread. Also this thread.
Try DFU mode and restore the 26.3.1 ipsw. It can be tricky so worth googling tips to help do it.

 

[mmkerc]

I have not (3 airs, 4 iPhones, 2 iPads, 2 MBP, 1 Mini).

While you only list one cause of failure (update to 26.4) which is a known bug/flaw, it is tough to offer any possible solutions without knowing more information as to the types of failure.

If you failure mode is the same I would look for external cause as well. Years ago I had a Lombard laptop, and a G4 powermac suffer logic board failures after about two years. The issue turned out to be a problem with my house electrical system (originally built in 1897) that had knob and tube wiring which was causing significant fluctuations in voltage, grounding, and cycle.

If the failure mode is different each time, more likely bad luck.

 

[benwiggy]

Apple product are usually very reliable and long-lived. But I have heard (anecdotally) of a pattern where some people seem to have "terrible luck" with repeated failures.

I'd agree that it could be environmental: high humidity, extremes of temperature, dust, 'dirty' electric supply, etc.

I have an M1 iPad Pro, an M1 MBP and an M2 Pro Mini, all running well; and I've had a succession of Macs for 25 years or so, very few of which have failed.

 

[dmr727]

Apple stuff in the house older than 2 years:

M1 Air
M2 Air
M1 iPad Air
iPhone 14
iPhone 15 Pro
3x Homepod Minis
2x Airpods
2x Apple TVs
2x Apple Watches

I had to replace the keyboard on my wife's M2 Air, but otherwise everything has been perfect. We also have an iPhone 17, M4 Air, and iPad mini 7 in the house, but those are all relatively new.

Maybe just good luck? But overall we've found Apple hardware to be reliable, or at least as reliable as anything else we could be buying.

 

[dmr727]

Come to think of it, I have a Mac IIci in the house with a bad motherboard, but given it's coming up on 40 years old, I'm willing to give Apple a pass on that one. 😉

 

[Vincent Hanna]

My consulting firm supports 65 users across 10 companies and we haven’t had a single hardware failure on a Mac less than seven years old in over a decade. Hundreds of individual machines of all types over that time.

 

[acuturis]

Many reports of M1 and M2 MacBooks bricked by 26.4. Solution seems to be DFU mode and reinstalling 26.3.1 NOT 26.4. Also reports of Apple saying new logic board needed. EG This post and the rest of that thread. Also this thread.
Try DFU mode and restore the 26.3.1 ipsw. It can be tricky so worth googling tips to help do it.

You have no idea how grateful I am, Mike! You saved me a couple of thousand bucks and helped me recover all my data.
I had already spent a few hours at the Apple Store, where I was told it was likely a logic board failure. Then you responded to my post and pointed me to these steps — I followed them and it brought my Mac back to life:

MacOS 26.4 update broke MBP

Making an account just to say I also had this on my 2023 M2 Pro Macbook Pro 14 inch. I set the update downloading and when I came back, my machine was completely dead with no signs of life other than Magsafe showing orange and then green once fully charged. Used A Mac Mini at work with apple...

forums.macrumors.com

And thanks to everyone here for the suggestions and help — really appreciate it!

 

[anthony13]

our m2 iPad Pro died a few weeks back while in use. The screen just literally went blank and it was dead. Luckily Apple covered it. The buttons seemed squishy to me, not clicky, which made me suspect some sort of physical damage perhaps caused it but the Genius Bar said the screen just died.

Separately, I’ve had 3 HomePod full sizes die on me over the years. None were covered and I won’t be purchasing any more of them. In fact in the final instance, the guy at the Apple Store told me ‘no one really brings these in anymore, I forget we even sell these’. I actually love the product but they are too costly to die every few years.

However back to the OT, I would say these our outliers in my long history with Apple products. They have been consistently overall reliable.

 

[NoBoMac]

Two devices here.

iPhone 4S power button failed two year and about two weeks in (was always sticky).

2008 MPB... 11 years later when GPU finally fried itself.

And to be "that guy", maybe not being nice to one's devices? In backpacks/book bags and being crushed by the contents, tossing the device around, slamming open/closed the lid on laptops? Somewhat regular topic here, especially the getting crushed in a backpack.

 

[Apple_Robert]

You have no idea how grateful I am, Mike! You saved me a couple of thousand bucks and helped me recover all my data.
I had already spent a few hours at the Apple Store, where I was told it was likely a logic board failure. Then you responded to my post and pointed me to these steps — I followed them and it brought my Mac back to life:

MacOS 26.4 update broke MBP

Making an account just to say I also had this on my 2023 M2 Pro Macbook Pro 14 inch. I set the update downloading and when I came back, my machine was completely dead with no signs of life other than Magsafe showing orange and then green once fully charged. Used A Mac Mini at work with apple...

forums.macrumors.com

And thanks to everyone here for the suggestions and help — really appreciate it!

In my opinion, the forum membership is the best resource for what we all have happen (in various modes) over time. I am glad you got back up and running.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I’m trying to understand whether this is just bad luck or something others are seeing too.

In our household, most of these are my wife’s devices, used very lightly (a couple of hours per week, no heavy workloads, no physical damage, never exposed to water):
• MacBook Air M2 (2022)
• iPad Pro M2 (2022)

Separately, I personally had a:
• MacBook Pro 2016

Across all of them, we’ve run into serious issues around the ~2/3-year mark.

The most recent one is the MacBook Air M2 — it completely bricked during an update to macOS 26.4. The battery was fully charged, and the update was done normally. After that, the device would not boot.

We tried recovery, but App Store / recovery options didn’t help. Apple’s conclusion was that the only solution is a logic board replacement.

What’s concerning is:
• very light usage (for the newer devices)
• no external damage
• failures still happening relatively early
• and in modern Macs, that often means full board replacement rather than repair
s such as you describe.
Also, several of my friends report having issues with their MacBooks over time, which makes me wonder if this is more common than it seems.

This experience has made us hesitant to buy Apple devices again.

At this point it feels like a pattern rather than isolated cases.

Has anyone else experienced similar reliability issues with recent Apple devices?

No. Lots of devices for decades and never failures such as you describe. Even my original HomePods still work fine; but I have taken care not to make any software changes to them because they are easily bricked. Two keyboard replacements to 2016 MBP at Apple's expense.

 

[Mike Boreham]

You have no idea how grateful I am, Mike! You saved me a couple of thousand bucks and helped me recover all my data.
I had already spent a few hours at the Apple Store, where I was told it was likely a logic board failure. Then you responded to my post and pointed me to these steps — I followed them and it brought my Mac back to life:

MacOS 26.4 update broke MBP

Making an account just to say I also had this on my 2023 M2 Pro Macbook Pro 14 inch. I set the update downloading and when I came back, my machine was completely dead with no signs of life other than Magsafe showing orange and then green once fully charged. Used A Mac Mini at work with apple...

forums.macrumors.com

And thanks to everyone here for the suggestions and help — really appreciate it!

Very good to get positive feedback! Thanks.
Guess you have to wait for 26.4.1 but might be worth holding off to check for confirmation on these forums. Apple are unlikely to admit there was a problem, or declare a fix.

 

[Sezel]

You have no idea how grateful I am, Mike! You saved me a couple of thousand bucks and helped me recover all my data.
I had already spent a few hours at the Apple Store, where I was told it was likely a logic board failure. Then you responded to my post and pointed me to these steps — I followed them and it brought my Mac back to life:

MacOS 26.4 update broke MBP

Making an account just to say I also had this on my 2023 M2 Pro Macbook Pro 14 inch. I set the update downloading and when I came back, my machine was completely dead with no signs of life other than Magsafe showing orange and then green once fully charged. Used A Mac Mini at work with apple...

forums.macrumors.com

And thanks to everyone here for the suggestions and help — really appreciate it!

What the genius bar guys doing? Ripping customers? Advising to keep buying new products in case of any issue? Given this was only a software issue and instead of helping or even suggesting they simply wanted you to replace the board. No consideration of your time, data and experience. Just your money?
They are behaving like hyenas lurking in the shadows to prey on unsuspecting customers.

 

[anthony13]

What the genius bar guys doing? Ripping customers? Advising to keep buying new products in case of any issue? Given this was only a software issue and instead of helping or even suggesting they simply wanted you to replace the board. No consideration of your time, data and experience. Just your money?
They are behaving like hyenas lurking in the shadows to prey on unsuspecting customers.

I really don’t think it’s that calculated. Unfortunately in my experience the average Mac rumor member is more knowledgeable than the average Apple Store employee. I don’t mean that in a mean way but I think it’s just a product of the sheer amount of team members they need. I had one recently telling me to buy the wrong Apple Pencil for my iPad (it wasn’t compatible), and he had no idea.

In the beginning it was Apple die hards and now there’s an amount of them that it’s ’just a job.’ That said there’s also a ton of them FAR more knowledgeable than any of us too. So you just have to feel it out when you start working with a team member.

 

[mblm85]

The last Apple product I had that went faulty was my iPhone 4, one week before its warranty was ending. They gave me a brand new one. That sealed my Apple fandom.

 

[throAU]

No. Lots of devices for decades and never failures such as you describe. Even my original HomePods still work fine; but I have taken care not to make any software changes to them because they are easily bricked. Two keyboard replacements to 2016 MBP at Apple's expense.

One of my OG HomePods died a couple of years back(random pops/crackling) but the other one (purchased maybe 6 months later) is still going strong!

 

[Dreamholde]

Separately, I’ve had 3 HomePod full sizes die on me over the years. None were covered and I won’t be purchasing any more of them. In fact in the final instance, the guy at the Apple Store told me ‘no one really brings these in anymore, I forget we even sell these’. I actually love the product but they are too costly to die every few years.

We had a first-generation HomePod die on us, too. Fortunately, some online research turned up nicsfix.com and, since the speaker was already nonfunctional, I figured we had nothing to lose by sending it in. He was able to repair it, and it's been working great since we got it back over a year and a half ago. 🙂

(No relation to Nic, other than being a happy customer.)

 

[genexx]

I've never had any Apple device fail on hardware since my first Mac Centris 610 in 1993. They were all replaced after running for years of daily use. I had a MacBook Pro 15 Unibody from 2008 that I used as a DJ and VJ platform, heavy traveling unit, 8 years and still running when I sold it. My iPhone 11 ran for 6.5 years before I replaced it. My MacBook Air M2, bought September 2022, is still running 24/7 in great condition. My Mac Mini M4 is a year old and also runs 24/7.

When multiple devices from different product lines fail in the same household within similar timeframes, and under light use, that's a strong hint the problem isn't the devices. It's the environment they're running in.

I've spent years repairing tube amps in the hifi enthusiast scene and have rescued endless high-end guitar effect processors. The failure pattern is almost always the same: degraded capacitors, failing rectifiers, or voltage regulators that were specced too close to their limit. I've lost count of how many units I've saved by replacing a 1A 12V regulator with a 2A 12V. On a modern motherboard the exact same degradation happens, it's just harder to find because everything is smaller and more integrated. And this isn't just an Apple thing — motherboards going back to the Intel era have been repaired for exactly the same component-level failures caused by the same kind of electrical stress.

Dirty AC power — micro-spikes, voltage sags, high-frequency ripple — is what accelerates this degradation. It doesn't kill devices instantly. It stresses caps and voltage regulators over months and years until something gives. The result looks exactly like what you're describing: devices that work fine for a while, then fail around the 2 to 3 year mark. A failure during a firmware update is classic, the system is most vulnerable when writing to flash storage and a voltage dip hits at the wrong millisecond.

Because of my tube amp and guitar work I've always been careful about my own power quality, using isolation transformers and regularly checking my AC. This isn't paranoia — there have been guitarists who were killed on stage by lethal shocks from bad grounding, and countless others who were lucky to walk away. Especially in the US, stage power was notoriously bad, and I ended up having to modify many live guitar amps just to make them safe. And trust me, the things you find out there are sobering. I've lived in apartments where every outlet had to be replaced because the wiring was mostly loose on ground and badly connected. After the Berlin Wall came down I saw installations in eastern Germany that were genuinely dangerous. The best one was my wife's ice cream shop — a licensed electrician had signed off on the whole thing, and behind a single 16A fuse there were six additional 16A circuit breakers daisy-chained on badly run wiring. I had to intervene but got a professional electrician to redo it properly for insurance reasons.

The point is: bad wiring and dirty power are far more common than people think, and most people never check. I'd recommend having an electrician inspect your home's wiring and grounding, especially if the house is older or has been renovated. A loose neutral or bad ground connection can cause exactly the kind of slow device death you're experiencing without anything obvious like flickering lights. On top of that, invest in a decent UPS with AVR (automatic voltage regulation), something like an APC Back-UPS Pro. A regular surge protector strip only catches big spikes, not the slow degradation from poor power quality. A UPS with AVR actively stabilizes the voltage your devices receive.

If your next devices last significantly longer on clean regulated power, you'll have your answer.

 

[Steve Adams]

Bad luck for sure. I have had many Apple products and they only device I had issues with was my iPhone 13. Connectivity was horrible with that one. Since my mother does not travel much without my father, she took my 13. She has not issues that I was having so maybe the refresh to new fixed them.

The rest of my apple products have been rock solid. iPhones are the only apple products I have seen that have regular failures on both software and hardware. I work in the industry and more iPhones come back with major issues than any other devices combined. I think that's probably due to the sheer number of iPhones sold.

 

[maflynn]

Across all of them, we’ve run into serious issues around the ~2/3-year mark.

The most recent one is the MacBook Air M2 — it completely bricked during an update to macOS 26.4. The battery was fully charged, and the update was done normally. After that, the device would not boot.

We tried recovery, but App Store / recovery options didn’t help. Apple’s conclusion was that the only solution is a logic board replacement.

What’s concerning is:
• very light usage (for the newer devices)
• no external damage
• failures still happening relatively early
• and in modern Macs, that often means full board replacement rather than repair

I'm sorry.

I can't really lean on the excuse that its mere luck that has caused the failures across numerous products, conversely, I have no idea what it could be.

This thread is full of people who have had apple products many years problem free, so your situation is atypical, but that in of itself isn't helpful to you personally.

I'm just here to commiserate with you and say that its really horrible to spend so much money for an apple product only to fail so quickly

 

[bombardier10]

Repair shops are full of broken Apple devices. And they’re doing quite well.
You could make a living just by repairing broken Macs only 😃

 

[boswald]

Repair shops are full of broken Apple devices. And they’re doing quite well.
You could make a living just by repairing broken Macs only 😃

I'd love to do that. I'm just not that tech savvy. 🙁