You’ve done it now, Apple Music-phobes. Now Snopes is involved.
The myth-busting website, which has ended several of my burgeoning Facebook arguments before anyone could call anyone else a Nazi, has turned its attention to this week’s claims that Apple’s streaming service is just reaching into your computer and absconding with your music. And it has good news for the people who are frantically clutching their tunes like virtual teddy bears.
According to Snopes, the rumors we’ve heard are “Mostly False.” But here’s what that means.
Today’s post comes in reaction to that horror story that we — and several other sites — shared in which Vellum Atlanta blogger James Pinkstone claimed that the service had deleted over 100GB of files from his computer. Some of that, he said, included his own work as a freelance composer.
Snopes concludes that while it’s true that “Some users have had music files deleted after signing up for Apple Music [. . .] Apple is not ‘stealing’ music from people’s personal computers; the deletion of files was likely the result of user error or a problem with software.” It reached this conclusion based on Apple’s support site and a report from iMore managing editor Stephanie Caldwell.
The confusion and fear about Apple Music comes from some misunderstanding about how the iCloud Music Library feature works in both the streaming platform and the separate iTunes Match service. But the two key takeaways are that neither Apple Music nor iTunes will delete anything unless you tell them to and that you should always, always back up your files for this exact reason.
And now that we’ve sorted that out, we’re going to go figure out if KFC really had to change its name because it could no longer legally call what it was serving “chicken.”
Evan Killham is a freelance writer who lives in Nebraska and isn’t interested in football, so he has plenty of time to play and think about video games. He has written for Bitmob and GamesBeat and sometimes, he even goes outside. But not too often because he’s heard there are bees out there. Occasionally, companies send free units for review. Evan subscribes to Cult of Mac’s Reviews Policy and also does not keep the items he receives for possible coverage.
6 responses to “Snopes declares Apple Music deletion fears ‘mostly false’”
The article is wrong. Match deleted my files twice.
No, the article was almost certainly not wrong. It explained how that happens: “the deletion of files was likely the result of user error or a problem with software.”
I became an engineer in 1980. If I had a dollar for every time a user blamed their errors on software, I’d be a very rich man.
The problem with software is that “it is supposed to work in some way.”
If QA testers had a dollar for every time software engineers told them “this is not how it is supposed to work”, they would be billionaires.
Yes, we engineers have to tell them things like “this is not how it is supposed to work; your test is flawed. Read the documentation I gave you.”
There are debugging and audit tools that show which process created, modified, or deleted a file. Until/unless you provide filesystem audit records to show that Match deleted the files, the user screwed up.
Someone designed, built and tested software that deletes a user’s own, personal files without warning and for no apparent reason.
But yeah, it’s probably user error. If I had a dollar for every time poorly designed or programmed software …
“I don’t have a password for my Apple ID. iTunes deleted all of my stuff after I had my computer worked on at Geeksquad. I never created any security questions. Your system must be flawed, because it cannot possibly be me. I remember everything!” …uh huh.