Apple has released the second update to Mac OS X 10.6 (aka "Snow Leopard") - and claims that this gets rid of a serious bug that had deleted users' accounts and all their data.
The support note accompanying OSX 10.6.2 mentions, at the top of its list, "General operating system fixes provided for: an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account".
That's the one which we mentioned in mid-October, but by then it had already been noticed for more than a month.
The problem arose when someone created a "guest" account - one dreamt up by Apple which lets someone log in temporarily to the machine, but where all the data created during the session is then wiped when they log out. It looks like the wiping got too excited, and wiped the data belonging to the administrator who created the guest account as well.
But now it's fixed. We hope. (No, you try it first.)
There's also now a sneaky gotcha for those using POP3 email accounts:
Mac OS X v10.6.2 and later changes how authentication works for receiving POP messages in Mail. Mail no longer will try a different authentication method if the preferred one did not work. This means if your POP mail server does not support the authentication scheme you have selected in Mail preferences, Mail will be unable to process incoming messages.
Take note if you're still using POP3 (really, you should move to IMAP..).
There is also a slew of security updates included. Be safe - make sure you back up your data before you update. (Perhaps not with Apple's Time Capsule though...) And do tell us if the guest account problem is gone..
