Skip to Content

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]

Categories

iPod Family OS Rumors 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...
 

Add a Comment

*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

13 Comments

Filter by:
lunatic

I actually pretty like it(Athough I work with windows all the time, and only use mac at home.)

October 17 2006 at 2:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David

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.

October 16 2006 at 10:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
robertiv

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.

October 16 2006 at 9:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gandhi

Wild conjecture here, but could this possibly be implemented in the rumored Apple iPhone smartphone?

October 16 2006 at 9:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Cqrter

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.

October 16 2006 at 5:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sean Finn

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.

October 16 2006 at 12:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ed

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'.

October 16 2006 at 12:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Zach

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.

October 16 2006 at 11:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Peter Koritschan

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

October 16 2006 at 11:28 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Carbunkle

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?

October 16 2006 at 11:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.