Latest Apple Update can Break Your Mac with Bootcamp

By Nathan Statz

November 27, 2007: Thanks to a bug in the latest update to Apple’s Tiger operating system (otherwise known as version 10.4) users with Bootcamp installed can suffer a complete loss of data on their hard drives from the inability to boot up.

Unfortunately the newly released 10.4.11 update to Tiger can cause your Mac to lock up and be unable to load up, a problem which Apple store employee’s are calling a known issue” according to one forum user. The solution being recommended by Apple staff is to completely erase your hard drive and reinstall the operating system, which isn’t overly attractive to many users.

Apple’s Bootcamp software is extremely popular amongst Mac users because it allows the efficient running of Microsoft Windows on a Macintosh. The Bootcamp program is also a standard feature of Apple’s new operating system, Leopard or version 10.5 and is considered one of the strong selling points of the Apple offering.

The issue has caused a stir in social networking discussions and users from many corners are asking whether or not Apple shipped the update with knowledge of the bug. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Bootcamp is actually no longer supported on the Tiger operating system, so should users run into this bug with the latest update they’ll face not only the pain of a hard drive wipe, but the inability to run Windows via the Bootcamp software without being forced to pay for the upgrade to Leopard.

The issue has effected a former Apple analyst who told Macworld UK that"It is evidence (in my opinion) of very sloppy software release. To crash a system on a known problem with Boot Camp is 100 per cent totally unacceptable. People (like me) have just too much stuff on their systems to be having to start over with hard disk reformat."

IDM is still waiting for a response on the issue from Apple at this time.

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