Snow Leopard Data Deletion Bug!

Over 100 cases across online discussions forums indicate that there is a critical issue with guest accounts that affect Apple’s newly released Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Apparently, when singing into a guest account, Snow Leopard treats the main account as if it were a guest account as well and wipes the entire user folder clean.

This should be the normal behaviour of only only guest accounts, which are temporary accounts that can be enabled to allow guests to sign onto a Mac computer. After the user signs out, the guest account data is deleted. However, this reported bug does this on non-guest accounts, which is a problem to those who enable guest accounts but expect to sign back on their main accounts and find their data intact.

We advise you to always make several backups of your data, both local and remote or offsite. You may want to check out the various backup solutions offered by zuuMedia here: http://www.zuumedia.com/zuumedia/backup/zuubackup-home.html

For the BBC article on this issue, click this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8304229.stm

Apple Updates Snow Leopard

Apple has released an update to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, bringing the operating system to version 10.6.1.

The update provides:

• Printer compatibility enhancements for printers that do not properly appear in the Add Printer browser.
• Bug fix for DVD playback (when playback stops abruptly)
• Bug fix for the Dock (bug prevents removal of icons from the Dock)
• Bug fix for account set up and sending mail via SMTP servers in Mail
• Bug fix for Sierra Wireless 3G modems
• Adobe Flash Player update (new plug-in version 10.0.32.18)

The Flash update is particularly important as it addresses a key security issue.

Other security updates may also be available alongside 10.6 as well as for older versions of Mac OS X such as 10.5 and 10.4.

To update your Mac, click the Apple logo in the top left corner in the Menu Bar, then click “Software Update.”

Insecure and Out of Date Software

Software is continually being updated, improved and security breaches closed. Some companies including Micorsoft and Google have facilities to automatically update their security on your computer, but be careful relying on this is often switched off or updates do not install properly.

Other software manufacturers rely on you to go back to their website and download the latest version of their software. For example at zuuMedia when people have their computers serviced for the first time we are still seeing a lot still have old versions of Adobe Reader (most computers have this installed so you can open .pdf files), even versions 6 and 7 even though the latest version is version 9. The older versions are a lot less secure and have less functionality. It is free to download the latest version and this is one of the main reasons to regularly service your computer to fully secure and optimize it.