Filed under: iPod Family, OS, Rumors, Leopard
Rumor: portable user accounts coming in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard?
A new Apple patent uncovered by PC Pro hints at the possibility of portable user accounts making their way into the Spring '07 release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. For a quick break down: the long-standing rumor has been that this would allow a user to keep their account - the entire home directory, applications, media, preferences, you name it - on an external storage device like an iPod, and simply plug that device into any Mac and log in with access to all of their stuff. The possibilities are pretty juicy, and for once the language in the patent is fairly straight-forward, if not a little repetitive: "The multi-user computer system, eg. through its operating system, locates user accounts not only in local storage of the multi-user computer system, but also in any removable data storage attached to the multi-user computer system."While this particular rumor has been in the wind for a few years now, we don't have anything else specifying that it is for sure arriving in Leopard. This could be yet another unused patent, or it could be slated for 10.7 for all we know. As usual, we'll keep our ears out.
[via Slashdot]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ed said 10:37AM on 10-16-2006
Or it could just be another random Apple patent. Remember it was filed 4 years ago in 2002, there's no reason it'd appear in Leopard at all.
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Jonathan Allen said 10:55AM on 10-16-2006
I agree with ed, but that does't make me want this any less!
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Chris said 11:13AM on 10-16-2006
Too bad I'm such a Mac loner. I have no other Mac but my Macbook Pro that I have the opportunity to use, unless I take a trip to the Apple store. This feature would unfortunately be useless to me.
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Tom said 11:16AM on 10-16-2006
This was pointed out last week in comments to your portable Mac apps post. Repeating what I said then:
Regarding the whole portable home folder thing in Leopard, I don't think it's possible. Apple actually touted this years back (in 10.2 I think), but then pulled it quickly before release. There's just no way to account for different OS versions or stored local applications - all your apps would have to be in your home/applications folder to work and who does that? Even then, certain apps rely on system services that only exist on particular versions of the OS. For example, how is the latest Safari going to work on a 10.2/10.3 machine it's plugged into when the webkit it needs isn't there?
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Peter Koritschan said 11:28AM on 10-16-2006
I saw demonstration of a similar device on tv last night, when they were covering the CES 2006....
there's some info about it here:
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/spcl_prsntn/article/0,1805,HGTV_3909_4784493_05,00.html
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Zach Hale said 11:53AM on 10-16-2006
This would make a lot of sense if they were to move to flash storage on their laptops in the near future. Just keep all that data off the machine.
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Ed said 12:11PM on 10-16-2006
Peter, thats not really remotely similar. All that is is a very small 'headless' PC. This is talking about storing files on a memory card or USB 'key'.
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Sean Finn said 12:58PM on 10-16-2006
I used to work for a Biometrics company, and we had a product that was a USB Flash drive with a solid-state fingerprint reader on one end.
(Note: this was Windows only)
The one trick was the computer had to have our login application installed first (until it was part of the OS). The user sees the login screen, inserts their flash drive, puts their thumb or finger on the scanner, and the USB drive would authenticate your fingerprints and then deliver the needed credentials to the OS.
The drive also contained 512MB or whatever so that you could copy My Documents, or internet passwords, cookies, etc... Not everything - just your On The Go stuff.
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John Cqrter said 5:05PM on 10-16-2006
It is possible and I do it everyday between my MacBook Pro and MacPro using unison. A unix tool that can be dowloaded with fink. I can't see how it would be too difficult for Apple to do something similar with more finesse and obviously without having to do configure text files.
regards
John.
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Gandhi said 8:24AM on 10-17-2006
Wild conjecture here, but could this possibly be implemented in the rumored Apple iPhone smartphone?
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robertiv said 9:58PM on 10-16-2006
Why does it have to be a thumb drive? It could be any computer with an internet connection, and a (you guessed it) .Mac account iDisk. Now that sounds like something Apple would do.
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Digger said 1:50AM on 10-17-2006
This would be great for iPhone (which you will always have with you). I could then take my data home with me at night and use on my Mac at home. I leave my desk for a meeting ad I take my profile with me.
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lunatic said 6:00AM on 10-17-2006
I actually pretty like it(Athough I work with windows all the time, and only use mac at home.)
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