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A comment on Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update. Parent comment

Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by huffmsa on Sunday April 12, 2020 @05:52AM (#22847071)
For a lot of people, any non-normal state == bricked. Especially now, when the genius bar isn't open.

And yes, there's a difference between a soft brick and a hard brick, and it depends on your ability to repair.

Getting my phone stuck in a bootloop is usually a soft brick, but my Pixel went into one a few years ago for no apparent reason (likely mobo failure) and that was beyond my capacity to repair or diagnose, so it's bricked.

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Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by wlll on Sunday April 12, 2020 @08:04AM (#22847659)
I have literally never heard the term "soft brick" before. You're just describing "broken".
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Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by mannykannot on Sunday April 12, 2020 @10:01AM (#22848297)
It is the sort of nonsense we have to put up with when people start abusing a well-established term to get attention rather than to convey information -- though, in this case, it seems some machines really have been bricked.
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Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by snazz on Sunday April 12, 2020 @10:30AM (#22848472)
It's somewhat common in the custom Android ROM community, where there are different levels of "brick".
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Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by zaroth on Sunday April 12, 2020 @09:39AM (#22848161)
To be sure, a soft brick is a pile of clay or mud, not a brick at all. It has neither the form or function of a brick, and therefore is the perfect analogy to this vociferous misnomer.
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Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by j4yav on Sunday April 12, 2020 @07:50AM (#22847610)
In my experience people call those sorts of things broken or not working, rather than (soft or hard) bricked. So people would say things like "the power went out in my house and soft bricked my TV until the power company turned it back on"? It's interesting how language evolves.
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Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by huffmsa on Sunday April 12, 2020 @01:19PM (#22849604)
No, downloading a bad patch for your smart TV that puts it in a bootloop or won't let you change inputs would be a soft(ware) brick.

Hardware errors are hard bricks.

This isn't a difficult delineation.

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Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by j4yav on Monday April 13, 2020 @06:38AM (#22854604)
That doesn't seem to align with where you said that any non-normal state is bricked, and that the difference between soft and hard bricked is your ability to repair it.
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Re:Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this... by BubRoss on Sunday April 12, 2020 @07:30AM (#22847529)
Maybe you could call that broke, but that isn't bricked.
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