Snow Leopard Bug Responsible for Loss of User Data Gaining Notice

[MorphingDragon]

A, Dont use guest accounts.
B, Encrypt Your Home folder
C, Use parental controls.

IMO, anything wrong with Apple is blown out of proportion just because its Apple. People just end up going "meh, its windows" or "Why the hell did you buy a dell!?" or "Why in gods name did you buy a Zune?"

 

[MH01]

I'm not sure how you'd know how I lost data. Actually it was because one day, for some random reason, Windows refused to boot past an empty blue screen and mouse pointer. Explorer.exe would not start, under any circumstances, and Microsoft had no fix for the issue. The hardware was not "cheap" or "failing," and I am fully protected against viruses. Fortunately, having used/suffered Windows wince 3.1, I'm smart enough not to use it for anything important, thus no really important data was lost.

Data loss owing to any OS in unacceptable, but the Windows apologists really need to keep quiet.

You did not actually lose you data at that point. My assumption would be that windows had a driver issue. There are numerous ways to correct this, and frankly very simple. The only way you would have lost your data would have been if the HD had actually failed or you decided to reinstall windows and format the HD.

If windows ever craps out on you, do not format your HD, all you data is still there, you just have to reinstall the OS, heck just do a new instance of windows and then use explorer to navigate to you old files. I have never ever had Windows delete any of my data, the only time I have ever lost data was due to a HD failure. The good thing is that HDs tend to start making funny noises before they crap out.

 

[inlovewithi]

I'm not sure how you'd know how I lost data. Actually it was because one day, for some random reason, Windows refused to boot past an empty blue screen and mouse pointer. Explorer.exe would not start, under any circumstances, and Microsoft had no fix for the issue. The hardware was not "cheap" or "failing," and I am fully protected against viruses. Fortunately, having used/suffered Windows wince 3.1, I'm smart enough not to use it for anything important, thus no really important data was lost.

Data loss owing to any OS in unacceptable, but the Windows apologists really need to keep quiet.

All these Windows horror stories, I wonder why I never have any problems.

 

[Tommigun]

Don't get me wrong, it's a serious bug and it's potentially a PITA for anyone who encounters it, but really...in an era of <$100 1TB external hard drives and the utter simplicity of Time Machine, the amount of pity I feel for people who don't backup anymore is dropping exponentially by the month.

So if this had been a Windows bug, would people here still have said 'it's the user's fault for not backing up'?

 

[Tommigun]

All these Windows horror stories, I wonder why I never have any problems.

Same here. The problem is that Windows has like ten times as many users as Mac OS X, so the random flukes are much more common.

 

[BongoBanger]

All these Windows horror stories, I wonder why I never have any problems.

It's probably because you're competent.

 

[Macmel]

Actually, as someone who has lost all data from a Windows failure, I can safely ask you to take your boring trolling elsewhere.

But according to you, fanbois, that's what you can expect from a windows machine. That NEVER happens in OSX. And the truth is you don't even need a virus to do it, the OS does it on its own. Hilarious.
Being said that, my MBP with SL is running like a charm. Also my cheap PC, although is having some issues with the screen lately. No data loss, however.
And to finish, let me get this straight: if you lose your data in Windows, it's windows fault, but if you lose your data in Mac OSX it is your fault, right?.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Same here. The problem is that Windows has like ten times as many users as Mac OS X, so the random flukes are much more common.

Lets see what was the pretty common horror story for 95/98. "Your computer has performed an illegal operation." BSOD.

That really wasnt random flukes. WTF is an illegal operation@!?

 

[BongoBanger]

Lets see what was the pretty common horror story for 95/98. "Your computer has performed an illegal operation." BSOD.

That really wasnt random flukes. WTF is an illegal operation@!?

It's also over a decade ago. Around about the time Mac OS still had viruses.

 

[andy721]

Several posts have been implying that this isn't such a big deal because "no one uses Guest accounts", or, if they do, they mustn't be concerned about security. Well, I do use a Guest accounts for...guests. Like, for example, people who just want to use the internet when they are at my house and for whom I don't feel like setting up full accounts. I mean, that's the purpose of the Guest account, right? I don't expect iron-clad security from this kind of account, and of course I also have a backup plan, but I also wouldn't expect to lose my data either.

Am I alone here?

But what's the point you cant save their stuff when they do come over to use your computer. Most of my friends that come over are true friends so they wouldn't mess around and break it, if you have friends that would I wouldn't call them much friends. Kinda immature if you as me.

 

[andy721]

EXACTLY.

I read earlier on here where someone said the guest account was a feature that was rarely used. Bull****. It's a major feature that was in 10.5 that many schools and businesses use, in addition to the average home user. The main point of SL was to perfect "the world's most advanced operating system"... keyword: PERFECT.

Someone else also said it earlier... the list of bugs keeps getting longer. With the lack of major new features, I thought this would be a fantastic release due to QC. Oh wait, I forgot... operator error.

Not really people will get the latest operating system only because it's new and has new features and so on. They bypass the flaws hoping for updates.

 

[MH01]

Lets see what was the pretty common horror story for 95/98. "Your computer has performed an illegal operation." BSOD.

That really wasnt random flukes. WTF is an illegal operation@!?

Comparing windows 95/98 to SL, now that makes sense.

Though if your going to do that

Data deleted by OS
Win 95 = 0
Win 98 = 0
SL = 1


But jokes aside, a BSOD on 95/98 is completely irrelevant to this issue. Just accept that its a bug, apple messed up and lets hope its fixed asap.

BTW 95/98 were fine, if you going to poke fun and M$ OS use ME, that was a shocker!

 

[dernhelm]

BTW 95/98 were fine, if you going to poke fun and M$ OS use ME, that was a shocker!

ME was bad. But that's about the only truly BAD OS I've ever worked with. Vista was bloated and annoying, but not truly bad (I still avoided it, since I liked XP better). But the point is, every OS has it's warts. Some of Microsoft's have been pretty glaring up until Windows 7, and the virus thing will continue to haunt them so long as they maintain 90%+ marketshare, but OS/X is not without it's share of stupidity.

But this is not an example of anything more than a bug. It isn't a design flaw in the OS, it is simply a bug. And a pretty rare one at that. If you want to pick holes in the design of parts of OS/X, you can do a lot better than pointing at this bug. Start reading Gruber's stuff - that would be a good start.

 

[9822737]

This has also now been reported in the UK and is the top story on the Technology section of the BBC News website - must be major news if it's about Apple and NOT about the iPhone!

Link

AnDy

 

[Macmel]

Any evidence that SL was "rushed"? I'm not buying it, myself. SL has had _way_ fewer issues than any other version of OS/X at this point in it's release. This single bug is certainly not enough to convince me that it wasn't ready, since it could've made it through anyway. At some point you have to stop testing and release - you are ALWAYS going to have bugs, and you can't test forever.

But maybe I'm just more understanding since we are right at the end of a 18 month release cycle ourselves...

So they didn't upgrade computers with guest accounts activated? I wonder what kind of test do they make... Because that sounds pretty much as a standard test.

 

[hagjohn]

I'm glad that Apple acknowledged the bug and is working on fixing it. Whether it's rare or not, is irrelevant.

 

[MH01]

ME was bad. But that's about the only truly BAD OS I've ever worked with. Vista was bloated and annoying, but not truly bad (I still avoided it, since I liked XP better). But the point is, every OS has it's warts. Some of Microsoft's have been pretty glaring up until Windows 7, and the virus thing will continue to haunt them so long as they maintain 90%+ marketshare, but OS/X is not without it's share of stupidity.

But this is not an example of anything more than a bug. It isn't a design flaw in the OS, it is simply a bug. And a pretty rare one at that. If you want to pick holes in the design of parts of OS/X, you can do a lot better than pointing at this bug. Start reading Gruber's stuff - that would be a good start.

Completely agree with you. Its just a bug, and for those effected, potentially very nasty. Windows 7 and SL have issues and will continue to have them. I just kinda find it funny that some people are in apologist mode and are trying to justify this bug by raising windows past failures. If this happened in Windows 7, the ***** storm would be just amazing, cause it happened on OS X apple fanbois are blaming users for not backing up.

Having been with apple for 15 years I am really really really peeved that I do not qualify for the triple kool-aid that some fanbois on this forum are on. Does apple sent this stuff out, anyone have a link to a online shop? I have to try this stuff!! Just for a day I want to experience complete denial that Apple can do anything wrong!

 

[Macmel]

I have installed snow leopard on 28 iMacs at my college via upgrade means to keep all the Adobe CS4 Suites intact, I have also installed it on my own 3 Mac minis and MacBook all clean installs, no issues on any of the 28 iMacs or my own Macs, and my college uses the guest account as well as our own logins. I know since I help out in the iMac and eMac rooms, because the main I.T tech, just deal with windows lol.

i'll look today on a few more machines, but no one has reported it to the head of media. So I don't think its affecting our machines.

Rounding up, there's around 100 million computers in the world. Again rounding up, about 10 % are Macs, that is, 10 million Apple computers. You have tested 28, all of them with the exact same configuration (both hardware and software), which means more or less the same than trying on the same system 28 times. Let's assume that you tried on 28 different Macs. That is you have tried 0.00028 % of Apple's computers out there. And that's, according to you, statistically significant.
Also, the fact that Apple has already acknowledged the problem, to you means less than your highly reliable test on the huge amount of 28 computers. OK.

 

[MH01]

Rounding up, there's around 100 million computers in the world. Again rounding up, about 10 % are Macs, that is, 10 million Apple computers. You have tested 28, all of them with the exact same configuration (both hardware and software), which means more or less the same than trying on the same system 28 times. Let's assume that you tried on 28 different Macs. That is you have tried 0.00028 % of Apple's computers out there. And that's, according to you, statistically significant.
Also, the fact that Apple has already acknowledged the problem, to you means less than your highly reliable test on the huge amount of 28 computers. OK.

Its posts like that, that apply logic and reasoning that completely ruin discussions. I hope your ashamed of this post!!!!!!!

 

[MorphingDragon]

Comparing windows 95/98 to SL, now that makes sense.

Though if your going to do that

Data deleted by OS
Win 95 = 0
Win 98 = 0
SL = 1


But jokes aside, a BSOD on 95/98 is completely irrelevant to this issue. Just accept that its a bug, apple messed up and lets hope its fixed asap.

BTW 95/98 were fine, if you going to poke fun and M$ OS use ME, that was a shocker!

95/98 Gold releases were extremely bad. The corrupting OS would delete your files anyway. So me and my illegal operations would beg to differ.

 

[3D0G]

But what's the point you cant save their stuff when they do come over to use your computer.

Most of my friends/guests generally don't need to save any stuff on my computer. Most of them just want to use the Internet, or if they do save an occasional file, they would want to save it off to a USB or email it to have at their own home later anyway. For the few that come over all the time and actually do work where they need to save files permanently on my computer, I do in fact set up real, non-guest, accounts for them.

Most of my friends that come over are true friends so they wouldn't mess around and break it, if you have friends that would I wouldn't call them much friends.

First of all, who said that *all* my guests are friends? Sometimes I have people over whom I have met just recently and/or otherwise don't know.

Second, my friends wouldn't knowingly screw up my computer, but some of my friends (as with some friends of most people, including you, I expect) aren't the most computer literate and might innocently change some settings or download/install something seemingly minor into my root/admin account. Again, not a purposeful screw-up, but why take the chance? Especially when it's so easy to point them to the existing Guest account, which is exactly its purpose!

Third, you said it yourself: "Most of my friends that come over are true friends so they...". OK, so, what about the other friends? I suspect you meant the same thing I did--that they might accidentally screw something up or change settings which you may not want in your account.

Fourth, why are you getting personal about what kind of friends I have?

Kinda immature if you as me.

Immature? Again, why are you getting personal about it?

 

[astranovus]

There are more than 1 billion PCs on this planet and Apple does not have a marketshare of 10%. 3-5% would be more realistic.

I for one use Windows and Mac OSX and this bug in Snow Leopard is an absolute showstopper. Losing all of ones data is about as bad as it gets. Unforgivable really.

On the whole Mac OSX and Windows have been pretty reliable over the last 5 years, but this is one hell of a bug and really needs to be sorted quickly.

Once in a while everybody makes a mistake and operating systems are pretty complex beasts nowadays.

I just wish all of this Mac is more reliable than PC malarky would stop.

I have been running Vista since early 2007 and Windows 7, Beta, RC and now RTM since the end of 2008.

Besides two minor driver issues (not MS fault) early 2007 on Vista, I have had zero problems. No viruses. spyware, system hangups or anything else.

I have had a few hangups and a lot of permission repair issues on Mac OSX, but no real showstoppers.

People need to keep things in pespective.

Rounding up, there's around 100 million computers in the world. Again rounding up, about 10 % are Macs, that is, 10 million Apple computers. You have tested 28, all of them with the exact same configuration (both hardware and software), which means more or less the same than trying on the same system 28 times. Let's assume that you tried on 28 different Macs. That is you have tried 0.00028 % of Apple's computers out there. And that's, according to you, statistically significant.
Also, the fact that Apple has already acknowledged the problem, to you means less than your highly reliable test on the huge amount of 28 computers. OK.

 

[MH01]

95/98 Gold releases were extremely bad. The corrupting OS would delete your files anyway. So me and my illegal operations would beg to differ.

So are you saying that this Bug in SL is okay cause you had a bad experience in 95/98???

Heard of Xp, Vista or windows 7? If you still using 95/98, which is long long unsupported by m$, I have little sympathy for your illegal operations errors

And explain how 95/98 were bad at their time? Extremely bad?? please...

 

[edesignuk]

Mainstream UK media (BBC) have now picked up on it.

Data losses in Snow Leopard bug.

 

[MorphingDragon]

So are you saying that this Bug in SL is okay cause you had a bad experience in 95/98???

Heard of Xp, Vista or windows 7? If you still using 95/98, which is long long unsupported by m$, I have little sympathy for your illegal operations errors

And explain how 95/98 were bad at their time? Extremely bad?? please...

I never said the bug was okay... ever.

Im guessing you used 95b or 98SE??