I bought this brand new MacBook Pro few weeks ago, now one of the two Thunderbolt ports are not working.
When the MacBook starts, the battery icon is black filled with a bolt inside. The system information says that the battery is fine and charged, the cable is plugged in but not charging. When I connect the actual charging cable it stays that way and doesn’t charge (I waited and checked for at least 10 mins). The other port works fine though. Crazy thing it doesn’t sound the “charger connected” ding when I plug in the charger. I’m using the original charger.
I Googled and read about resetting the SMC system which asks to press the special keys and power button for 10 secs. When the MacBook started, it showed the proper icon which was a black filled cell icon. I plugged in the charger into the same port and it starts charging after a few seconds. I removed the charger and it goes back to the same behavior.
As for the data transfer connection using the same port, I’m using a hub for that and it wasn’t working either with that port.
I’m new to Apple Ecosystem and I don’t have an Apple store around here to get it checked by them. So any help would be immensely appreciated because I’m pretty much losing my mind over this investment.
I also tried enabling and disabling battery health management mode; that didn’t help at all.
Let me know if anymore information is required to troubleshoot this.
Best Answer
Return it. Charging (I’m not referring to “Battery Health Management) is not something that’s regulated by the OS. It’s something that’s handled by the charger and the USB controller that negotiates charging current (you don’t boot the Mac to charge it). I was recently reading a tech article where one one these controllers can fail for one port will “kill” the charging for all ports (have to find the article). Could it be this? Possibility or possibly not. Point is, you have a hardware issue that’s not going to be fixed by OS tweaks, unfortunately.
Given that this is brand new and you’re already running into issues, you need to return it. Not for repair, mind you, but for refund/replacement. It’s unacceptable that new products fail this suddenly. Don’t put the burden on your shoulders; put it on Apple’s (my consumer advocacy side coming out).