In a rare piece of bad publicity for Apple, it would appear that OS X Snow Leopard, the latest iteration of the seemingly endless tenth version of their operating system, has been destroying user data.
The bug was first reported on discussion forums by users, angry that their entire main profiles, including photos, documents and videos had been completely wiped from their machines.
The problem appears only to affect people who have a guest account set up on their computer. It would appear that the operating system is treating the user’s main account the same way as the guest account and resetting it when the user logs out.
This is a lesson, if any were needed, of the importance of keeping regular backups. With the prices of external and extra hard disks at an all-time low, it’s simpler than ever. This is helped by Apple’s time machine backup software which is included in every copy of OS X Snow Leopard… luckily!
An Apple spokesperson said the problem “occurs only in extremely rare cases” but suggested that users should “delete their guest accounts and, where necessary, create new ones that are native to Snow Leopard.”
Microsoft were not asked for a comment, at least not yet, but if they had been it would probably have pointed out that Windows 7, their own new operating system, does not delete your files for you. That said, the feature that would have reset the Windows 7 guest account was pulled while the operating system was being tested. We can only speculate as to why.
Despite the downplaying of the bug by Apple, there can be no doubt that there is nothing an operating system can do to annoy users more than deleting all their files and data. We can hopefully expect a fix for this as soon as Apple can advertise for, and hire the staff required to man a new bug-fixing department. 
