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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- A MacOS Tahoe upgrade went south on a brand-new machine.
- The solution to recover is not for the faint of heart.
- If your Mac Studio is bricked, a DFU Revive/Restore is necessary.
Earlier this month, I received my new Mac Studio M3 Ultra computer. I decided to make the purchase because I was doing bigger and bigger video projects, and my Intel-based iMac wasn’t up to the task.
The new machine has 96GB of RAM and that screaming M3 Ultra chip. Yeah, it’s gonna be blazing fast.
As soon as it arrived, I began the process of unboxing everything, moving my iMac to another location, and setting up the Mac Studio. Everything went just fine… until it didn’t.
After about an hour of using the machine, MacOS informed me that the update for Tahoe was available. Given how much I love MacOS 26 on my MacBook, I definitely wanted it on my Mac Studio. So, I okayed the upgrade.
The upgrade kicked off and seemed to be doing everything right. And then disaster struck.
Also: M3 MacBook Air vs. M2 MacBook Air: Which Apple laptop should you buy?
The Mac Studio rebooted as it should, but wound up with a black screen. I waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing.
I decided to reboot. Same results. I thought I could just boot into recovery mode and fix the issue. Nope. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the machine into recovery mode. After a bit of research, I discovered what was happening.
In September 2025, a bug was discovered where the installer loads the MacOS Tahoe driver for the Apple Neural Engine, but then a hardware check fails, and the installation process is aborted. Most users reported that the installation simply failed and rolled back to Sequoia. In my case, the installation wasn’t aborted; it failed, and the OS was unable to load.
It seemed as if there was nothing I could do… that $3,700 computer was bricked. Thankfully, I found the solution.
With MacOS, there’s something called the DFU Firmware Revive/Restore, which is a deep recovery process for unresponsive Macs. To run a DFU Revive/Restore, you have to have another Mac to update or reinstall firmware and the OS via a USB-C cable.
It’s tricky and, in my case, didn’t work as expected.
How to do a DFU Firmware Revive/Restore
To pull this off, you have to plug a suitable USB-C cable (one that can handle both fast charge and data transfer, and not a Thunderbolt cable). You can’t, however, just plug that cable into any old port. Instead, you have to use the DFU port, which can be found in the following locations:
- 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 or M5 chip: The rightmost USB-C port when facing the left side of the Mac.
- Mac Studio: The rightmost USB-C port when facing the back of the Mac.
If you have a different Mac, check out this page to find out which port is the DFU port.
Also, make sure nothing is plugged into any other USB port.
Here’s how the DFU Revive/Restore works:
Plug the USB-C cable into the affected Mac first and make sure it’s powered off. Next, make sure the other Mac is powered on and that you are logged in. Unplug the affected Mac from power. Press and hold the power button, and then plug the Mac back in. Keep pressing the power button until the DFU Finder window opens on the other Mac. In that window, you’ll see two options:
- Revive – updates a Mac’s firmware and recovery OS (recoveryOS) to the latest version without erasing user data or the MacOS volume.
- Restore – erases everything and reinstalls the OS from scratch.
Also: 5 ways to run Windows apps on MacOS – and 2 are free
First, I ran the Revive option. That took over an hour and, in the end, didn’t work. When that failed, I ran through the process again, only this time selecting the Restore option.
Guess what? That didn’t work either. I was certain I’d have to lug the Mac Studio to my local Apple Store and have it flash the firmware for me. On a whim, I decided to unplug the Mac Studio, wait a moment, plug it back in, and boot. Luck was on my side, and the login window appeared. Breathe in. Breathe out. Relax.
Naturally, I decided to ignore any notifications for a Tahoe upgrade because I do not want to go through that again. Even though Apple has apparently fixed the issue, it clearly hadn’t, because my M3 Ultra Mac Studio failed on the upgrade.
Why I use Linux
In nearly 30 years of using Linux, I have never had such an issue. Between Windows 11 taking forever to install and MacOS suffering from bugs that brick brand-new machines, it just solidifies my opinion that Linux is the superior OS.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still use MacOS because I depend on DaVinci Resolve, which still has issues on Linux installations without NVIDIA GPUs. Will I ever trust another MacOS upgrade? Who knows, but I can tell you that I’ll be very hesitant to go through with any upgrade in the future without doing my research.
Also: How to decide between Linux and MacOS – if you’re ready to ditch Windows
Apple should never release an upgrade that bricks one of its most powerful machines. That’s just bad form. Fortunately, the OS does have built-in tools that can resolve the issue. However, in this case, I would certainly not advise those without plenty of technology skills to attempt a DFU Revive/Restore. If this happens to you, unplug that Mac and head to the Genius Bar.
