Mac OS X 10.9.3
In the recent release of iTunes 11.2 and OS X 10.9.3, Apple brought a measure of joy to those users who missed the ability to sync contacts and calendars over a tethered USB connection. Gone since the introduction of OS X Mavericks, its reintroduction will be welcomed by those who don’t care to sync this kind of data over iCloud.
One unexpected consequence of the recent OS X 10.9.3 update is that the Users folder at the root level of the startup volume is hidden from some users, though not all. I was among them. When installing the 10.9.3 update available from the App Store on both my 2009 Mac Pro and late 2012 MacBook Air, the Users folder was indeed missing. Yet I’ve heard from a couple of colleagues and several people on Twitter that their Users folders remain visible.
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Fortunately, there’s an impermanent solution to the problem. Launch Terminal (/Applications/Utilities), enter
sudo chflags nohidden /Users, and press the Return key. You’ll be prompted for your user password. Enter it, press Return again, and the Users folder will be visible as it once was.
Turns out that hidden /Users folder has nothing to do with OS X 10.9.3. Your /Users and /Users/Shared folders will be hidden by OS X upon every reboot of your Mac if you have updated to iTunes 11.2 and have Find My Mac enabled.
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One of our readers indicated that Apple said this is intentional. If it were in 10.9.3 I would believe it. But seeing as how it’s part of an iTunes update, I’m not sure.
Update (2014-05-19): Jeff Johnson:
How do you even accidentally put a bug in iTunes that hides the /Users folder? I would like to see that code.
Upon each reboot, the permissions for the /Users and /Users/Shared directories would be set to world-writable, allowing modification of these directories. This issue was addressed with improved permission handling. For information on the general content of iTunes 11.2.1, see http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5434.
Xlr8YourMac in 2001 (via Nick Heer):
Apple has identified an installer issue with iTunes 2.0 for Mac OS X that affects a limited number of systems running Mac OS X with multiple volumes (drives or partitions) mounted. For those systems, running the iTunes 2.0 installer can result in loss of user data.
