The tiniest of glitches in installation software for Apple鈥檚 new iTunes 2 program can delete large parts of a user鈥檚 hard drive.
This potentially disastrous flaw was reportedly caused by the omission of a pair of quotation marks in the underlying code of the software installation program.
iTunes 2 is a music editing software program for Apple computers. It is designed for use with Apple鈥檚 new MP3 player, the iPod, and can be used to upload songs to the device.
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The installation program can only cause damage if a user has Mac OSX installed, has configured their hard drive into smaller partitions to install other operating systems and has named these separate partitions with a space at the beginning of each.
But it is not uncommon for users to store files in other partitions and to name their drives in this way. A number of people have reported losing data after performing the installation.
Big bug
Mac enthusiasts have posted messages to Apple鈥檚 own online discussion boards recounting how the problem deleted gigabytes of data.
鈥淭his is the worst bug I have EVER encountered!鈥� reads one posting. 鈥淗ow will Apple compensate MY LOSS of gigabytes of files??鈥�
According to an explanation posted on the Mac enthusiast web site Macslash.com, an omitted set of quotation marks in the code of the file iTunes.pkg appears to have caused the problem.
Apple has issued a warning about the problem and a fixed version of the installation software. The company says that users should be able to salvage much of their data using data recovery software such as Norton Utilities.