User Switching Question

ScottW

ScottW

Founder
Staff member
Okay, I don't have 10.3 nor do I want it right now... but my question relates to User Switching.

Can you switch users while the screen saver is locked? This would be awesome if you could. I think that if a screen is locked and you walk up to a system, you should be able to switch over to another user account w/o screwing up the existing persons login.
 
Well, that's a nice idea. It isn't in Panther WWDC or from the looks of it 7B21, but maybe in a month or two, if Apple agrees with those who want it.
 
in windows 2000 and xp, if a computer is locked, you'll need the active user's password - or an administrator user's password - to unlock it.

haven't checked 7B21, but weezer says it's possible, so i believe it is. nice ;-)
 
Right, that's why I mentioned it. (Meant "bet," BTW. But you all knew that.)
 
Yes, in XP this feature is important. At my former employer we had a dozen or so workstations and were always moving around to different ones depending on what was going on (this was in a bank). We had been using OS/2 warp until they switched to XP. With OS/2, not really a multiuser OS, you had to either logoff one user and log back in (5 minutes of waiting), or reboot entirely (10-15 min), if the user had locked the machine and then left the office. In that industry (banking) it's obviously really important to be able to lock down a workstation. I am hoping for a feature similar to XP's, not a screen saver hack but a built in lock up the computer and from there be able to go to any user.

Edit: Not sure if I made it clear that in our setup, any user could switch to their own login from a locked up screen, not just admins.
 
In the WWDC release, if the second user was logged in, but not active, you could unlock the other user's locked screen with the second user's name and password.

At least you could on mine...and no, the second person was not listed as an admin.
 
Originally posted by WeeZer51402
in 7B21 you can switch users from a locked screen
Click to expand...

That's great news, i was about to ask the same question! Now, is there an option to turn this off, like if you had something processor-intensive going and you wanted to lock the whole machine to you? That would be equally useful :)

edit: another question: when multiple users are logged in, do the apps of all the inactive users 'pause' or do they keep on running?
 
wow... user switching is ridiculously fast... it almost seems that they could use this technology to make multiple desktops for a single user... hmm
 
I think the idea was that you could switch users, and your account would keep working, so you could set a large rendering or something and switch away so someone else could use the computer without being able to interrupt the process. But I can see how this would be inconvenient if you both had to do processor-intensive tasks at the same time. Dual processors would help in this case, probably.
 
I've been on a dual 533 MHz G4 and a single 800 MHz G4. The dual 533 feels faster when it's using 100% of both processors than the 800, and I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that the dual 533 is faster. The simple fact is that OS X was built more for multiprocessor systems.

So yes. Multiple users with dual processor configurations doing processor intensive tasks will run better than they will on a single processor machine.
 
Originally posted by mightyjlr
wow... user switching is ridiculously fast... it almost seems that they could use this technology to make multiple desktops for a single user... hmm
Click to expand...
2 CPU's, 2 keayboards, 2 mice, and 2 monitors and two users could each work simultaniusly...

He he... Just being silly...
 
Actually, it's not silly at all... as computer's become faster, why not make one computer do the job of two, if it's possible?

It's possible. And, in a few years, maybe even practical
 
Funny, I seem to recal desktops being the evolution away from that :P

It used to be that everyone had dumb terminals connected to a mainfraim computer and everyone shared processing power.
 
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