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iOS Really needs multi-user capabilities
5 points by robomartin on June 12, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments
Just watched the keynote. The social integration is very interesting. However, it now creates a situation for devices used by multiple people. In our home, iPads and iPods are multi-user. Grab one and go.

That means that one of several people could be on any device at any time. If I were to setup Facebook through Settings with my login information the integration will be broken for others. It also opens up some negatives. A seven year old can post to your FB account just as well as you can.

Then there's the scenario of handing your iDevice to someone else, say a house guest. They have full access to everything on your device.

It goes beyond that. Everyone's browsing history will now pollute the browsing history on your Mac. Everyone can edit documents and affect them on your Mac. Photos. Etc.

iOS6 is screaming for multi-user capabilities.



How would they implement this?


Option to provide lock-screen option to allow guests to login using their iCloud account.


So you would have to download all content from the cloud onto your device? Apps, movies, books, music etc? Not feasible this would take far too long and would severely limit the space available on the device.


Right. I'd also add a general guest account where you, the device owner, can sandbox the available apps as well as permissions (no download, no installs, no cellular network data, etc.).

The device owner/admin should be able to create and disable users as required. If you have kids, you might want to create an account for the kids that only offers them certain apps and limits a number of capabilities.




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