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OSX To Feature Portable User Accounts?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the home-you-can-take-with-you dept.

eldavojohn writes "A new patent filed by Apple is causing speculation that OSX is soon to receive a new feature. From the article: '[the patent states] that the user account may be stored alongside general data storage or "other functionality". All of which seems to suggest that at some time soon we may be able to load our user accounts onto an iPod, hard drive or USB keydrive and take them wherever we go.'"

2 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. This is new? by Short+Circuit · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Just last week I set up a user account on my Linux box for my roommate. I partitioned his 80GB external hard drive so that he'd have a 1GB ex3 and a 79GB FAT32 partition.

    The ext3 partition is mounted under /home/rensik, and the FAT32 partition under /home/rensik/Desktop.

    For the past year and a half, my home directory has resided on my external 250GB drive, which might get connected to any of three machines.

    --
    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  2. Old Planned Feature by beefstu01 · · Score: 1, Redundant

    For what it's worth, I believe that this was meant to be a feature in 10.3, but it got cut. As I recall, when Steve Jobs first announced the OS, there was a small blurb on the "Sneak Peek" page about a "Home on your iPod" feature. It was up for a month or so, then disappeared. Guess it's been in the pipeline for a while. Source.