The intertubes are ablaze today with reports of a serious bug in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that, under certain conditions, can destroy all of a user’s personal data.
The problem lies with Mac OS X’s Guest Account functionality, and was first reported at the beginning of September on Apple’s (s aapl) Support Discussions forum. Specifically, some Mac owners have found that after using the Guest account, and later logging-in to their usual primary account, all their personal data has been wiped clean. Everything. Documents, pictures, movies, music. The whole lot.
More worryingly, some users report that they didn’t even use their Guest account first — simply booting up their Mac normally resulted in an “out of the box” experience — default wallpaper, dock configuration and, again, a loss of all personal data.
It seems just about every technology or Apple–focused website is reporting the issue this morning. At a time when Microsoft (s msft) is suffering the humiliation of having permanently lost customer’s data, Apple is in similar hot water. It’s not a competition, boys! Read More about Snow Leopard Bug Deletes All Data, Apple Enters Data Loss Competition With Microsoft