“The way Apple has handled the iTunes 11.2 upgrade bug that made the /Users folder invisible is troubling. It’s a matter of concern how and why it happened, that an OS bug should be introduced in an iTunes update, and how Apple handled the fix,” John Martellaro writes for The Mac Observer.
“First of all, it’s very important for app updates to be completely orthogonal to OS operations,” Martellaro writes. “If there’s a methodology in the script for an app update that affects the operating system, then the update process should come under considerably more scrutiny. It needs to be rethought.”
“QA testing, painstaking work that it is, can always benefit from more experienced, curious, savvy testers. Letting the customers find terrible bugs in a new release is greatly damaging to Apple’s image, much more so in magnitude than paying for additional tests,” Martellaro writes. “Of further concern is the way Apple handled the fix. Once it was understood how the iTunes 11.2 update, in concert with FMM [Find My Mac], could cause an important system folder to become invisible, it would have been reasonable to surmise that a great many users were affected by this bug. Accordingly, it was disingenuous for the Mac App Store release notes for iTunes 11.2.1 not to mention that it fixed this specific problem that some users were having with the OS… Instead, Apple quietly mentioned the issue in its Apple Product Security Notes—something that not many customers subscribe to—very late on May 16. Plus, there was a mention in an Apple support note, on the weekend, just to be all official.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Puleeze. A mistake was made and it was quickly corrected. Not a big deal.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jeff” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple releases iTunes 11.2.1 update to correct hidden ‘/Users’ folder bug – May 17, 2014
OS X 10.9.3: Why is the /users folder hidden for some users, but not all users? – May 16, 2014
Apple releases iTunes 11.2 – May 15, 2014
