Unconfirmed Mac OS X Snow Leopard Bug Erases User Data [Mac OS X Guest Account Logging to Delete Primary Account’s Data?]

I guess that whoever said that Apple’s Mac OS X is more stable, secure and dependable than Microsoft’s Windows platform was only partially right. Although it’s still unconfirmed by Apple at this point, it looks like Cupertino’s latest Mac OS X version, Snow Leopard has a terrifying flaw. Various people have reported that logging in with the guest account will make the OS delete all the personal data that’s already associated with the primary account.

It seems to me that losing personal data is quite popular these days. After we’ve seen T-Mobile and Microsoft trying to retrieve the lost data of all SideKick users that resulted in an inglorious failure we now hear that the competition isn’t doing all that well either. Sure, the two issues aren’t exactly comparable at this point. Thousands of SideKick owners have lost all their personal data so far, but only a few Apple users lost their user data after having encountered the bug mentioned above.

How is it possible for this to happen? After all Apple is famous for its more than stable and completely secure Mac OS X. Has Cupertino launched version 10.6 aka Snow Leopard too fast? Does it need more work before we can declare it a hit OS?

Snow Leopard has been available for almost two months now, and we have already seen it fail a couple of times. Previous reports have shown that Snow Leopard is not compatible with software like Norton AntiVirus or Apple’s Airport Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow and Apple has even acknowledged this issue. Then Apple admitted that its Mac OS X is not as safe as advertised. In fact there are quite a few viruses and malware “infections” capable of taking it down. Of course, these are problems that can be fixed through updates and we’re less likely to make a big fuss about them since we know that Apple is working on them.

But a bug that could potentially erase all your personal data from your account is a lot more annoying, particularly because Apple hasn’t admitted it. Is everyone at Cupertino working on the matter?

In the mean time what you can do in order to avoid having your data deleted is to disable your guest account for the time being. You should also consider backing up all your vital information and after you have done that you can backup your backups too. In case you data is already lost then you should try to do some yelling in front of the Genius Bar!