[NewsPoster]

Apple has taken steps to try and fix an extremely rare bug in iTunes where a user's local music files were being deleted, by sending two engineers to one user's home to find the source of the problem. A blog post from one affected user claims a pair of senior software engineers from the company were flown from California to his home in Atlanta to analyze the situation, in response to increasing reports of unauthorized music file deletions.

James Pinkstone claims to have lost 122GB of files in his music collection, and was visited by engineers identified as "Tom" and "Ezra" last Saturday. Pinkstone outlined that there were some "conditions" the engineers would have to abide by to work on his system, namely that research would only concern Apple Music, iTunes, and the iTunes library, would only be used for troubleshooting the problem, that other files would be left alone, and that he would be in the room to oversee their work.

The engineers initially used an external drive connected to Pinkstone's notebook, as well as a "specialized version of iTunes" that would document processes in more detail than the consumer edition, to transfer music between drives among other tests. As well as the two local engineers, a conference call was also held with "several other engineers" based in California, discussing what the next step would be. The issue was not able to be replicated on that day, with seemingly no pattern emerging relating to the age, genre, size, artist name, or format of the deleted and remaining files.

That evening, Pinkstone was instructed to buy more songs from iTunes, import tracks and mixes from Logic and Pro Tools, make changes to some playlists, and to stream some of the library to his Apple TV. The next day, one engineer turned up to collect data logs and to clean up the notebook's drive.

Apple has already advised that it cannot replicate the issue itself, but would be adding "additional safeguards" to prevent such an issue from occurring.

[pottymouth]

They let him stay in the room, but I'm guessing the problem can only be replicated when he's sitting in the chair with his hands on the keyboard.

[sgs123]

Heisenbug: any attempt to observe it changes its behavior.

[Inkling]

Years ago, a friend worked on Boeing's parts program, which tracks millions of parts for aircraft reaching back into the 1930s. Bored, he created a little routine. If a certain set of extremely rare circumstances occurs, including a precise millisecond of time, it would briefly display a screen saying "Divine Intervention," before filling the user's request. What he did wasn't malicious. It was a joke that hurt no one. This iTunes problem is malicious in its result. Apple might want to search what must be the massive source code for iTunes for lines that, under a very peculiar set of circumstances, do destructive file deletions. Find the code. Then find who did it.