Apple flew two engineers across the country to investigate the iTunes music library deletion bug that caused a flurry of attention after Jake Pinkstone, a designer at Vellum, wrote a blog post lamenting the loss of his decades old collection (Don’t worry, he was able to get it back after restoring from a backup, which just goes to show: always keep a backup).
“Tom, along with his boss Ezra, had just spent most of Saturday at my dining room table with me, trying to recreate a disaster like we were Netflix green-lighting Fuller House. So far, no luck,” Pinkstone wrote in a follow-up blog post. “As one of the first steps in our experiment, I signed back up for Apple Music under Tom and Ezra’s supervision . . . we spent hours troubleshooting, but the problem eluded us. This time, the files remained, which was just one of many confounding elements of my whole saga. The problem wasn’t cut-and-dry, therefore has proven difficult to replicate.”
Apple recognized the iTunes music library deletion bug may exist in the wild. “We have not been able to reproduce this issue, however, we're releasing an update to iTunes early next week which includes additional safeguards,” the company announced in a statement.
Apple is taking the issue seriously enough to invest the resources (including the cost of a “delicious” breakfast sandwich for Pinkstone) and labor needed to solve the problem and although Apple’s visit to Pinkstone’s home didn’t bear any fruit, at least they’re investigating.
In the meantime, make sure to download the iTunes 12.4 update that Apple released earlier this week. While it doesn’t fix the bug outright, it does include various safeguards and patch fixes to help protect music libraries. Also included in the update were some interface design tweaks, and the returned inclusion of the sidebar.
