[Claire Bennett]

Error 4013 (NAND write failure) and 4014 (SEP communication timeout) during restore often masquerade as cable/PD issues when the true culprit is a degraded USB-C controller firmware state preventing stable DFU enumeration. Verify PD contract negotiation with system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep -A 5 "USB-C" and force a deep SMC/TPM reset on Apple Silicon via sudo shutdown -h now followed by holding Power+TouchID for 20s post-GPT partition map verification (diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk0). If Finder sync stalls at “Waiting for changes” during the restore payload phase, disable com.apple.finder.plist DisableAsyncCopy and kill fsck_apfs zombies hogging the snapshot mount (lsof | grep fsck_apfs). Swap to a Thunderbolt 3/4 passive cable rated 40Gbps/100W to eliminate PHY-layer signal integrity drops mimicking NAND errors.

MacBook Pro 16″ M2 Max | iPhone 16 Plus

London, UK | "Swap the USB-C cable before blaming the logic board."

[Claire Bennett]

A silent DFU-mode recovery attempt (error 4013/9) during overnight Finder sync over Wi-Fi will momentarily drop the USB-PD contract to 5 V/3 A, causing the battery gauge (gas gauge IC BQ27546) to lose its 80% set-point and fall back to full-charge termination voltage (4.44 V). Capture the handshake with log stream --style syslog --predicate 'eventMessage contains "USBPD" or eventMessage contains "AppleUSBTCPD"' --level debug while plugged in; look for PDO renegotiation followed by charge_limit_override = 1. Recovery: disable “Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi” in Finder, then run idevicediagnostics run --test=charging via libimobiledevice to re-flash the PD policy bundle.

MacBook Pro 16″ M2 Max | iPhone 16 Plus

London, UK | "Swap the USB-C cable before blaming the logic board."

[Claire Bennett]

The macOS installer’s “insufficient space” error is a false-positive logic check (analogous to Error 4013/9 generic comms failures) where osinstallersetupd queries physical free blocks (statfs) ignoring the APFS purgeable reserve; Finder’s syncdefaultsd/FileProvider sync state often lags behind diskspaced reclamation, showing stale capacity. tmutil deletelocalsnapshots targeting the specific failed-install timestamp is surgical and safe—APFS copy-on-write ensures zero data loss for the live volume. If the installer still blocks, trigger immediate reclamation via sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0 (grow to fit) which forces the reclaimer; ensure MagSafe/PD handshake is stable (no pmset -g log power assertions) as power loss during snapshot teardown corrupts the APFS superblock.

MacBook Pro 16″ M2 Max | iPhone 16 Plus

London, UK | "Swap the USB-C cable before blaming the logic board."

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