iPadOS 18 update pulled after bricking M4 iPad Pro

Apple’s traditional fall rollout of major software updates has hit its first bump in the road for 2024, with the news that iPadOS 18 has had to be pulled after reports that it was bricking users’ iPad Pros.

iPadOS 18 was announced back in June at WWDC, and finally became available to the public in its finished form on Monday, September 16. But despite the months of beta testing that preceded the launch, a problem quickly became apparent: some owners of the M4 iPad Pro (which came out earlier this year) found that installing the new software bricked their device–which is to say, rendered it completely non-functional.

One such user started a thread on Reddit to highlight the issue.

“I have the M4 13[-inch] Pro,” they wrote. “At some point during the [iPadOS 18] update my iPad turned off, and would no longer turn on… I tried all of the reset options but nothing worked. I just took it to the Apple Store who confirmed it’s completely bricked.”

The user indicated that the unit is unfixable and that they will need a replacement.

Confirming that this wasn’t a one-off, commenters began chiming in with their own experiences. A decent chunk of respondents indicated that their update had proceeded fine (even with the exact same model), but dozens had encountered the same problem: I stopped counting at 36 fellow brickees.

Apple has now confirmed that the problem exists and that it has taken down iPadOS 18 until it can find a solution. The company issued a statement to MacRumors: “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.”

The general consensus is that, as Apple claims in its statement, this problem affects only the latest generation of iPad Pro, the models with an M4 processor (and not all of them, either). Numerous Redditors reported that standard iPads, iPad minis, or iPad Airs had not been unaffected.

I spotted just one iPad Air owner complaining of bricking on the Reddit thread, but they conclude by noting that “the repair facility… now says it was bent and will not repair without $650.” So that’s presumably unrelated.

Here at Macworld we generally advise readers to wait until a few days after the launch of a major software update before installing it, in case something like this crops up. Anyone who has experienced the problem should take their affected device to an Apple Store or an official third-party repair store and seek assistance there.