Apple Admits ‘Extremely Rare’ Leopard Bug Could Delete User Data
Apple admits it is aware the Snow Leopard version of OS X can delete data when people log in (even accidentally) using the operating system’s “guest” account. “We are working on a fix,” the Cupertino, Calif. company said in a statement Monday.
No timeframe was given on when a fix would be released. Snow Leopard 10.6.2 reportedly is in the hands of developers.
Until recently, Apple had remained mum as the Apple community fumed over several reports that upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard caused data stored in the /User directory to be deleted. As Cult of Mac reported Monday, such mass deletions reportedly happen when Mac owners accidentally use a “guest” account.
“So I restarted my computer and logged on again, it was exactly the same, everything gone. At which point I looked in the Users folder to find that my User profile had been removed and replaced with a fresh one with the same name,” one user wrote at Apple’s Discussion forums.
A similar complaint appeared last week after a Snow Leopard user reported data being deleted following an OS upgrade. The reports spawned a number of posts from several Mac blogs, potentially prompting Apple to issue Monday’s public statement.
- Via Engadget and AppleInsider
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
