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iTunes 2.0 Installer Deletes Hard Drives

Posted by michael on from the making-room-for-more-mp3s-i-guess dept.

Cheviot writes: "It seems Apple's new iTunes 2 installer deletes the contents of users' hard drives if the drives have been partitioned. I personally lost more than 100gb of data. More information is available at Apples Discussions board. (registration required). Apple has pulled the installer, but for hundreds, if not thousands, the damage is already done." The iTunes download page has a nice warning about the problem. Ouch.

7 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. how can microsoft top that? by frankmu · · Score: 0, Troll

    the folks at redmond must be working overtime to top that.

    --
    Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
    1. Re:how can microsoft top that? by Glytch · · Score: 1, Troll

      You apparently lack experience with NT.

  2. mmm... by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 2, Troll

    ...smell that? that's a steaming heap of Apple quality.

    - A.P.

    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
  3. Re:Nature of the bug by Hieronymus+Howard · · Score: 0, Troll

    See what happens if you use a 30 year old operating system!

    HH

  4. Ahh... Imagine if this were a Microsoft product. by sheldon · · Score: 1, Troll

    There would be great shouts of anger. Oh those bastards, they do this because they do not want you dual booting!

    It's because they are a monopoly! They are purposefully targetting Linux partitions.

    Ohhhh!!! AARRRGGHHH! Grand Conspiracy!

    Yet here in these responses I see the simple realization that some idiot made a mistake writing the installation script.

    Are you sure?

    Are you sure it isn't Apple trying to subtly encourage people to use Microsoft's Media Player instead? :)

  5. Wait a second... by A_Non_Moose · · Score: 0, Troll

    if this is Unix on a Mac (os X) how come there was not a dialogue box that said "I see you shot yourself in the foot (the mac part).

    Would you like me to get the other one? (the UNIX part) and two buttons that read "Yes, please" and "No, I'll do it myself".

    See the kind of warped thinking programming in C/C++ does to you?

    Let that be a lesson, kids.

    The power of unix is like playing russian roulette with an uzi...

    Unix is user friendly, it is just picky about its friends...

    When you tickle the dragon both ends are dangerous..

    Programmers: "We burn the candle at both ends...only after it has been dipped in the midnite oil!"

    Anywho... you know it is time to take a break when you use the terms "stack, push, pop and race condition" as sexual references.

    ...."and then I told so-and-so to go void main() himself he was such a null pointer..."

    --
    Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
  6. Re:The bug by MobyDisk · · Score: 1, Troll
    I for one am surprised that so many critical pieces of software, particularly installers, are written in loosly-typed non-compiled languages such as perl, or shell scripts. I come from a DOS/Windows world where scripting is not available to the degree it is in *nix, and everything is written in fully compiled languages.

    I'm not trying to say that this bug might not have happened if the code were written in C++, but I think it would be more difficult. Languages that allow such convenient string concatenation syntaxes also allow for unseen bugs in the substitution. I've never seen a Windows program install using .vbs files copying to directories. It's not that it couldn't, but it just isn't up to that scale deployment.

    Perhaps this practice of using perl/csh for crucial coding should be re-examined?