iPadOS 18 is bricking some iPad Pro 2024 units, leading Apple to pull the update

The worst kind of update

News By James Rogerson published 18 September 2024

iPadOS 18 recently landed alongside iOS 18, adding all sorts of tweaks, improvements, and new features to Apple’s tablets, but if you have one of Apple’s latest iPads, you won’t be able to download it right now.

Initially, iPadOS 18 was available for the iPad Pro 11-inch (2024) and the iPad Pro 13-inch (2024), but a number of users found the update bricked their devices, preventing them from turning on, and leading Apple to send out replacement iPads.

It’s unclear exactly how many users have been affected by this, but there are threads on Reddit and elsewhere reporting the issue, and it has proven widespread enough that Apple has temporarily prevented users of the iPad Pro (2024) from downloading the update.

In a statement to MacRumors, Apple said: “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."

A challenging chipset?

It’s not clear then why this is happening, but Apple’s mention of the M4 chipset there and the fact that the issue is only present on iPad Pros with that chipset, suggests the M4 chip might somehow be the culprit.

Don’t worry if you’ve already updated your iPad though – if iPadOS 18 was going to brick yours it seems it would do so during the update process, so if you’ve successfully updated already then your iPad should be fine. If yours did brick during the update though then it’s worth contacting Apple, because it sounds like Apple might need to replace it.

Other iPad models should be safe to download iPadOS 18, so if you’re using an older unit there’s no need to wait. As for users of M4 iPad Pros that are yet to update, we don’t know how soon Apple will fix this issue and once again make iPadOS 18 available, but we imagine the company is working to do so as soon as possible.

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