14 DAY TRIAL // Back in October 2018, Microsoft rolled out a Windows 10 feature update that got pulled only a few days later, just after the software giant discovered an issue leading to the removal of user files stored in libraries.
And now it’s the turn of macOS users to have fun with a similar bug, as the update to macOS Catalina might lead to data loss in the Mail app.
SpamSieve plug-in developer Michael Tsai has posted a warning on his blog to reveal that after installing macOS Catalina, some users could end up with missing or incomplete messages in Mail.
Furthermore, customers who attempt to move messages between mailboxes might notice that Mail only displays blank messages on the Mac. If other devices are synced, these messages could just be displayed as deleted.
“I don’t know whether these are due to Mail bugs or to other factors such as problems on the Mac or with the mail server. But my advice is to hold off on updating to Catalina for now,” Tsai explains.
No word from Apple for now
Is there any fix? By the looks of things, you can turn to Time Machine to access the previous versions of the folders in the data store of the Mail app.
“Apple advisors are apparently telling customers that if Mail data gets lost on Catalina, it can’t be recovered from a Time Machine backup that was made using Mojave. This didn’t make sense to me, and I’ve verified that it’s not the case,” the dev explains.
Apple has remained completely tightlipped on this bug, so at this point there are a lot of questions regarding this bug and the way customers can safely install macOS Catalina without risking to lose their emails.
One thing is certain though: Catalina has spent several months in the beta program and somehow this bug escaped unfixed. Once again, this is way too similar to what happened with Windows 10 October 2018 Update, as the data removal bug was actually discovered months before the public rollout started, only that for some reason it didn’t get any fix while the whole thing was still a beta.