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What is wrong with M5 Pro MacBook Pro and M5 Air?

MacCheetah3 said:
At this point… The TidBITS OP’s final words seem to be decent cautionary advice:
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To be fair, the Tidbits title is misleading - the M5 was not bricked, as the Genius Bar was able to activate it using ethernet, as the OP would have been if he had an ethernet adapter himself. But still a cautionary tale, because if you travel with your notebook and for some reason needed to factory reset it, that could be problematic if you don't travel with an ethernet dongle.

And, again, still waiting to hear if yesterday's release of 26.4 has fixed this issue.
 
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doogm said:
To be fair, the Tidbits title is misleading - the M5 was not bricked, as the Genius Bar was able to activate it using ethernet, as the OP would have been if he had an ethernet adapter himself. But still a cautionary tale, because if you travel with your notebook and for some reason needed to factory reset it, that could be problematic if you don't travel with an ethernet dongle.

And, again, still waiting to hear if yesterday's release of 26.4 has fixed this issue.
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Before Apple has this fixed (hope they will and do it quickly), they should give us an Ethernet dongle for free rather than gaining profits selling the dongles.
 
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hajime said:
But we need to go to an Apple store.
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Why? The resolution is to plug directly into a router to activate?

I think the option is to go to the apple store and have them work with you to activate or just plug directly into the router and do it yourself - if you are one of those few people that seem to run into an issue with the wifi.

Again, all indications seem to point that this is a very rare and uncommon issue
 
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maflynn said:
Why? The resolution is to plug directly into a router to activate?

I think the option is to go to the apple store and have them work with you to activate or just plug directly into the router and do it yourself - if you are one of those few people that seem to run into an issue with the wifi.

Again, all indications seem to point that this is a very rare and uncommon issue
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I don’t have an Ethernet adapter at home and not happy to buy one just to fix a mistake Apple made.
 
hajime said:
I don’t have an Ethernet adapter at home and not happy to buy one just to fix a mistake Apple made.
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Then don't buy a Mac. I'm not trying to sound harsh, but it seems you've already made up your mind that the M5 Macs have some sort of significant issue.

Given the cost of of Macs, buying an adapter is short money and it could be useful long term
 
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hajime said:
Based on experience, will Apple fix this problem?
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Yes, of course they will. Apple doesn't want to spend all day helping people with this issue.

As I said, 26.4 is out - it's possible it's already fixed. I don't feel like testing it for you, though.

I always have an ethernet adapter, just in case the wifi adapter fails, or I need to connect to my router directly because it has an issue. It's a good and inexpensive thing to keep around.
 
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hajime said:
But we need to go to an Apple store. Not all of us live near a store. Besides time, the gas price is also expensive.
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You can get them from Amazon or Wal-Mart, or Target, or anywhere. I used an Anker-branded one from Amazon to get my M5 Air going and it worked fine. Going to the Apple Store didn't even cross my mind.

This might already be fixed in 26.4. Who knows?
 
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So just buy a laptop and an Ethernet adapter and call it a day?

Each release has some problems. For example butterfly keyboard, slower SSD for M2, sudden drop of some resolutions when connecting an ultrawide with the M4, not recognizing settings of multiple monitors of the same models from all Silicon Mac, etc. When the redesign is released, it may also have some problems. It looks like if we worry about all these and wait for the next release, we can’t get out of this loop.
 
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hajime said:
So just buy a laptop and an Ethernet adapter and call it a day?

Each release has some problems. For example butterfly keyboard, slower SSD for M2, sudden drop of some resolutions when connecting an ultrawide with the M4, not recognizing settings of multiple monitors of the same models from all Silicon Mac, etc. When the redesign is released, it may also have some problems. It looks like if we worry about all these and wait for the next release, we can’t get out of this loop.
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It depends on what your tolerance is. Do you expect perfection? Will tiny flaws that don't impact your use of your computer bother you? I got an (11 core) M3 Pro, despite knowing that its performance isn't that much better than the M2 Pro. That doesn't bother me, I came from a 2012 11" MacBook Air so the performance leap was massive, and even now is still great.

The M5 MacBooks are amazing machines, and you will do well with one. How often do you expect to erase and reset your laptop? It's not the sort of thing one does often.
 
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Yes, this year’s machines are very good except for that bug. I hope there won’t be other issues to be surfaced later on.

I think the GPU of my Windows PC is dying. Each day the screen shows lots of colorful pixels or blank for a second and then resumes to normal.

It is just for temporary use. I will trade-in for a redesign later unless it has some design faults like butterfly keyboard.
 
hajime said:
So just buy a laptop and an Ethernet adapter and call it a day?

Each release has some problems. For example butterfly keyboard, slower SSD for M2, sudden drop of some resolutions when connecting an ultrawide with the M4, not recognizing settings of multiple monitors of the same models from all Silicon Mac, etc. When the redesign is released, it may also have some problems. It looks like if we worry about all these and wait for the next release, we can’t get out of this loop.
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This is the best summary of your posting here.
 
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The latest post in the Tidbits forum suggests that this was, indeed fixed with MacOS 26.4.

talk.tidbits.com

I bricked my new M5 MacBook Air

I was called back by Apple Care, and they wanted a blow-by-blow account of how exactly I got into the situation where there was no WiFi icon on the Activate Mac screen. Kevin from Apple Care said that it seems that I was running on a macOS 26.3.x version where this problem could occur, and now...
talk.tidbits.com talk.tidbits.com

Kevin from Apple Care said that it seems that I was running on a macOS 26.3.x version where this problem could occur, and now that I have updated to 26.4 I should not see this problem again.
Click to expand...
 
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I had seen a few posts on this issue on Reddit but I'm surprised it's an operating system bug. I have two USB-A Ethernet dongles which should work. One of my USB-C monitors has an Ethernet port so that could be used too. This is one of those things that should be in their manual testing suite as I don't know that beta testers would run into it.

This bug probably cost a decent number of people some wasted time.
 
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I had this same issue on both my M5 Pro MBPs. Plugging directly into router or using another Mac with Apple Configurator was the workaround. I have noticed since 26.4 it seems to be fixed as I can now choose a WiFi network when doing a system erase and restore.
 
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pshufd said:
I had seen a few posts on this issue on Reddit but I'm surprised it's an operating system bug.
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I don't think it is - it's probably a firmware issue, related to the M5 having a different network chip from earlier Apple Silicon MacBooks. The 26.4 upgrade also updated the firmware - that's what probably fixed the issue.
 
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doogm said:
I don't think it is - it's probably a firmware issue, related to the M5 having a different network chip from earlier Apple Silicon MacBooks. The 26.4 upgrade also updated the firmware - that's what probably fixed the issue.
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I read that all devices including iPhone that have the N1 chip have this problem.
 
hajime said:
Wasted an hour to go to three local stores but none of them have that adapter. There are also reports that it doesn’t work for everybody.

I will return them but hesitate to buy again because we don’t know if Apple will fix this problem and when.

From what I experience, not just Air but also Pro. Some said that also iPhone with N1 chip.

Today I will go to an Apple store far away from home. Most likely and as usual they will say that they have never heard of any problem with their products.
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You could have just checked the websites of all the local stores that sell the adapter, instead of driving around. Any generic adapter works.
 
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maflynn said:
Are you asking an actual question or just dumping on the M5 Macs?

I googled it, and here's the link
https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1rrr05u/brand_new_m5_air_stuck_on_activate_mac_screen

Also here's the pertinent information from the thread author:



How is this a screw up under greedy tim as the person stated in the reddit thread he cancelled the MA and caused the issue himself?

While I will be the first to admit, the process should have worked, the work around is easy and is in no way related to a hardware failure, since the wifi is working. More likely a bug in the activation process.
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Thats was the first solution I thought of while reading OP post. Lan cables have been used on Win laptops for decades to get them activated or initiated when they are new out of the box. Can't believe this isn't common knowledge now days even for Macs.
 
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