In my guide on how to set up ADB and Fastboot on a Mac, I had mentioned that the whole process was relatively easy and painless compared to a Windows based PC. However, earlier this week, when I tried to unlock the bootloader of my Nexus 6P on my Retina MacBook Pro, I ended up getting a very vague “couldn’t create a device interface iterator” error.

I have bene using ADB/Fastboot on my Mac since years now, and I have never run into an issue like this before. I tried updating ADB to the latest version but that did not work as well. I even tried the steps on a different Mac but the issue persisted. When I tried unlocking the bootloader of my Nexus 6P on a Windows based PC, everything worked like a charm and I did not run into any issues.

At first I thought the issue was due to some underlying changes made by Apple in OS X El Capitan. However, disabling SIP, Gatekeeper and tweaking other security related settings did not work. After a lot of head scratching and frustrating days, I finally found the solution to the dreaded “ERROR: Couldn’t create a device interface iterator: (e00002bd)” problem.

Turns out, Fastboot does not play well with OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan release. Apple seems to have borked some low-level system file which leads to fastboot throwing up the “Couldn’t create a device interface iterator: (e00002bd)” error continuously. The only solution to this problem is to update El Capitan to 10.11.2, which is currently in beta, and since Apple only releases beta versions of OS X to developers and public beta testers, general users are essentially out of luck until Apple gets around to releasing the final version of the OS to the public. Since Apple has already released the fourth beta of OS X 10.11.2 El Capitan though, it is likely that the final public release of the OS is around the corner.