Apple has temporarily halted the rollout of iPadOS 18 for some M4 iPad Pro models, among the most expensive iPads sold by the company, after some users complained that the update caused their devices to crash. In a statement to Engadget, Apple acknowledged the issue, saying, “We have temporarily halted the iPadOS 18 update for M4 iPad Pro models as we work to resolve an issue that is impacting some devices.”
The issue first surfaced via Reddit, where a growing number of M4 iPad Pro users reported how their iPads became unusable after trying to install the latest version of iPadOS. “At some point during the update my iPad shut down, and then won’t turn on,” a user named tcorey23 posted on Reddit. “I took it to the Apple Store who confirmed it was completely bricked, but said they had to send it to their engineers before they could give me a replacement, even though I have Apple Care.”
Another Reddit user named lisegot wrote that the Apple Store they took their bricked M4 iPad Pro to did not have any replacements in stock, which meant they would have to wait five to seven days for a working iPad. “No one was particularly apologetic and they also indicated they had no way of knowing if an update caused this,” they wrote.
It’s rare for an iPad to be bricked due to a software bug. ArsTechnica, which first reported the story, pointed out that the iPad can usually be put into recovery mode when a software update goes bad.
If you have an M4 iPad Pro, Apple won’t give you iPadOS 18 until this issue is fixed. It’s unclear when this will be fixed.
Apple posted iOS 18 adoption rates on Friday, which are only slightly different from the numbers for iOS 17 a year ago. The company says iOS 18 is installed on 68 percent of all iPhones (as of January 21) and 76 percent of models from the past four years.
A year ago, 66 percent of all iPhones were running on iOS 17, so iOS 18 is up two percent this year. The second statistic was pretty similar to today’s data: 76 percent of iPhones from the past four years were running on iOS 17 in January 2024. iPad owners aren’t changing dramatically either.
Apple says 53 percent of all iPads are running on iPadOS 18 (the same as iPadOS 17 a year ago). And 63 percent of tablets from the past four years are running on iPadOS 18. That’s up a notch from 61 percent of devices running on iPadOS 17 over the past four years, starting last year.