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Uh, a lot of families have a single computer with multiple user accounts for each family member.

In my experience the ones geeky enough to understand about multiple accounts have multiple computers. The ones that don't care so much about computers and so only have one computer mostly have everyone using a single account.

Extra complexity isn't an excuse. Have it default to one user account (like all Windows, Linux and Mac do), but have the possibility of creating other ones too. Your reasoning is the same as when most people say that not allowing multitasking saves battery time and there won't be programs in the background eating up cpu, but you can just have a setting to enable it and the default to the Apple way. One setting that makes your device a lot nicer for the people who want multitasking.

No, it isn't an excuse, it's a reason.

1) Having an option for every possible functionality isn't an answer. You end up with something like Azureus (Vuze). If you've never seen it, this will give you an idea. http://cobolhacker.com/images/content/torrent/vuze_options_screen_s.jpg There are so many pages of options, the index of pages is hierarchical.

2) You have to consider the ramifications of user accounts. How does the user share data between them? For example if they acidentally created a document when it was logged in as someone else. On a desktop OS, you have certain folders that you share. And a file manager for moving the document to and from that folder. On the iPhone OS, there is no user access to folders. Each application looks after it's own data, in a way suitable for that data. So either the user can't move that data, or every app has to have it's own extra UI to do so. Which isn't impossible, just pointless and confusing for a device that almost no one would ever set up multiple accounts on.

3) An option to allow multitasking is a bad idea too. Not only because of the too many options problem. But because people without full understanding would end up enabling it, or having it enabled for them, and then whine about poor battery life when some background app kept eating up the battery. And other people would wonder why their iPhone won't multitask when everyone else's does.

Most of the time, having an option to switch advanced functionality on or off is a bad idea. It's usually better for the designers to make sensible choices in the first place. Though this concept won't be understood by most on /. as few here understand design - hence the usability disaster that is Linux.

Please post more citations on Meowing Nuns.

Here you go! Meowing Nuns.

very powerful magnets

does not equal a several thousand dollar NSA degausser/electrically charged coil specifically made for the purpose of erasing hard drives.

http://www.cobolhacker.com/?p=488

Oh, the endless cycle of strife it brings to be an overly pedantic hopeful candidate for /. clerisy stardom.

None of the parties involved in this debacle had a choice, in my opinion. I wrote this to help me get my own head straight on the matter, if anyone cares:

http://www.cobolhacker.com/?p=912

The WHO raised fears of this great pandemic because it's their job to. The media ran with the story because it is their job to. The public became afraid so the politicians moved in to quell their fears because that's their job. The drug companies made stupid piles of unneeded drugs because the politicians asked them to. In short, there is no conspiracy, everyone behaved the way they did because is was their job to, and they don't want to lose their jobs.

That would be because they Keep losing them.

Seriously, they do have guns, they bring them along quite often for miner things like when they think they will encounter a bunch of people "dancing all night long".

But yes, they don't always wear guns. That's probably because most of the UK citizens are refused the right to use a weapon in their own defense and guns are pretty much locked away from the unprivileged classes of people in the UK. So in a conversation about being shot or shooting them first, is bringing up UK police really relevant? I don't really think so. You also have the CC cameras on every street corner and cops in the UK travel in packs with several not more then a few moments away.

I don't care what they call their bar, as long as the booze is good.

Maybe they'll serve a nice shiraz.

Are you sure? There's been this myth going around for years that you can accidentally erase your hard drive by putting fridge magnets on the side of your case. It's total bullshit. A buddy of mine tried to replicate this by putting rare-earth magnets right on top of a drive. It didn't do jack. The drive was fine and all the data was intact.