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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.'"

45 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Ultra portable by BWJones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, ideally this would be part of a uber road warrior ultraportable solution rather than an addition to a USB drive or iPod. Since the demise of the 12in Powerbook G4, many of us have had to shlep around larger form factors (15in Powerbooks/Macbook Pros) that are a bit harder to deal with on planes, trains and such.

    I would hope for a little tablet much like the Newton, but running a full version of OS X and given the costs of flash drives, this may in fact be possible at 32 to 64GBs in size which would make for a usable battery life as well. Travel is difficult enough and for really long flights (international ones), battery life simply does not cut it, even with the new MacBooks. And even if you did have a power outlet in your seat, they are incompatible with the current magnetic and oh so cool MacBook power systems.

    Having something like this that one could back up photographs to, give talks from, check email and calendar and address books, read ebooks and mark up pdf documents, be able to link via Bluetooth to your cellular phone and such would all be possible in a small form factor that one would not necessarily want/need the ability to run big apps like Photoshop on.

    And when the trip is over, you plug into your desktop at home and automagically have everything sync up.

    Oh, please... oh, please... oh, please.... Come on Steve! You and I have talked about this going back..... what, years now! The technology is there, the market is there, all the pieces are in place.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    1. Re:Ultra portable by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I would hope for a little tablet much like the Newton, but running a full version of OS X and given the costs of flash drives, this may in fact be possible at 32 to 64GBs in size which would make for a usable battery life as well.

      I would hope for a 10-12" (~2lb) convertible tablet, much like a cross between the Thinkpad X-series and the old Sharp Actius MM-10 (it had a dock!).

      But most importantly, I want well-supported syncing between systems. I've got two Macs now (an iBook and an iMac), and it's absurd that iSync is useless for them. In fact, syncing anything with iSync fails to work properly: I can't use either my iPod or my Palm PDA conveniently because although it syncs events, the categories, locations, and notes are lost!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    2. Re:Ultra portable by Mac+Degger · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's been in the cards for a while...the idea isn't new (hell, even I've discussed it on- and offline many a time). How they could get a patent on this is beyond me, for all the examples in books, magazines and on the 'net.

      --
      -- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
    3. Re:Ultra portable by profplump · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've actually done it, both on a removable-disk and network basis. It's a simple as a login/logout script that makes a symlink. Seriously, this is a retarded patent. I'm all for Apple and portable home directories, but this should not be patentable.

  2. Impressive by TCM · · Score: 5, Funny

    If only other systems had thought of that. You could implement it so that all the data of one user is stored in a single directory, called home directory.

    We could even invent a new notation specifically for that. Like, I don't know, ~user/ or something.

    Man, Apple users get all the goodies. :(

    --
    Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
    1. Re:Impressive by hypnagogue · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You may want to consider that the problem is more subtle than that.

      Just because you have your home directory on an iPod connected to a foreign Mac doesn't mean that you can authenticate and log in. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could have, in your home directory, credentials signed by a trustee that you could use to log in to any system, with your access limited to writing to public areas or your own home directory. Furthermore, encrypt that image on the iPod so that it can't be accessed unless you authenticate successfully. I'm not sure what the scope of the invention is, since I refuse to read patents or patent applications, but it might be a great solution to a tough problem. It also has implications for DRM licensing schemes -- licenses that apply to the user, not the computer.

      I know sarcasm is like breathing after a few years on slashdot, but this might actually be an interesting invention. We'll have to wait and see.

      --
      Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
    2. Re:Impressive by epee1221 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      with your access limited to writing to public areas or your own home directory.
      Darn! I was gonna put a sudoer account on a jump drive and root every box in sight!
      --
      "The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
    3. Re:Impressive by GCsoftware · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Interestingly enough, this is almost identical to the system I implemented for using USB flash drives as authentication tokens as my MSc thesis. I might put up the PDF of the project up if people are interested.

    4. Re:Impressive by catwh0re · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Just a few things about this and your comment.

      The feature was to appear back in 10.3, but was likely pulled because the hard drive based iPods of the day weren't having 100% stability with the hard drives inside. So it would be a bad idea to have your iPod carry around all your irreplacable data when there is a chance that just dropping the iPod could destroy it. Now Apple have significantly large flash based iPods (big enough to support a home directory.) So the idea is back on the table without the fear of randomly losing all your data from damage to the iPod.

      In terms of the feature itself it carries your "keychain" and preferences with you, so operating on any mac will be the same experience as using it on your own mac at home. (Not just access to home directory files for example.) Additionally OSX already supports "live" encryption of the home directory, under the feature name of "FileVault". Which can be optionally enabled.

      Of interest as well is that many users are already doing this, as you can already install your entire OS + home folders onto an iPod, then plug it into any mac and boot from it. (Contract graphic designers usually do this with the "daisy cutter" drives as they require no batteries/powersource.)

    5. Re:Impressive by Lussarn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is straight from the patent:

      A few sophisticated users have modified operation of existing operating systems, such as Mac OS X, to provide some portability to their user account from a work computer to a home computer. This requires specialized software tools to manipulate and modify the data structures for a user account in a database (e.g., netinfo database). Armed with such specialized tools, a very sophisticated user would first establish a local user account on the multi-user computer (work computer), and then use the specialized tools to edit the location of the default user directory, such that it is made to reside on an external storage device. Then, at the other location where a multi-user computer (home computer) is to be used by the same user, a user account would be again established on such a machine, and then using special tools to render the user identifier the same as that which the work computer used when creating the user account at the work computer.

      So basically they say that prior art do exist. They even admit (in the fscking patent application!) "a few sophisticated users" have already done this, and now they want to steal that work and patent it. Isn't that great.

      These modifications to the multi-user computers are not intended modifications and thus tend to compromise the reliability of the operation of the multi-user computers.

      This would translate to "if something isn't invented by Apple it doesn't count as prior art".

      Further, the required specialized tools, although available, are neither well documented nor user-friendly.

      But they do exists, as you admit in your application. This looks like the kind of bullshit these companies puts in EULAs to make them stand up better against the laws, with the difference that this is a patent application and now it's used to stand up better to prior art.

    6. Re:Impressive by rjstanford · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's because you don't (or at least you're not supposed to) patent a concept. You patent a process. They're patenting a much smoother, more seamless process. That's allowable, and is actually what patents were originally intended to support.

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
  3. or a DRM limitation by doodlelogic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe for movies the studios are demanding only the paying user can view on their iPod - so movie downloads will be tied to a user account on each device.

  4. = instant rootkit! by dolphinling · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wheee, I'll put my root account on my ipod and then I can take over any box I want! Woohoo!

    Except wait. I don't run OSX. I run Linux. And I don't have an ipod.

    Oh well.

    --
    There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
    1. Re:= instant rootkit! by 44BSD · · Score: 3, Funny

      He used some wicked-ass crypto to turn binary into Roman numerals, in 7337-speak. Don't be hatin!

  5. Prior art? by SIGBUS · · Score: 5, Informative

    Such functionality is already available in Knoppix. Not only can you store your configuration and updates on a USB thumb drive or HD, but the OS itself is portable, too.

    --
    Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
    1. Re:Prior art? by lmpeters · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think the idea here is that the home directory is mirrored on the internal hard disk AND an external device of some kind. Then again, I think InterMezzo has prior art on that. So this may seem like a novel idea for your average PC user, but it's not novel enough to warrant a patent.

      Of course, it's not like the USPTO hasn't ever issued a patent on something that should never have been patentable...

    2. Re:Prior art? by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 2, Informative

      This patent was actually filed back in 2002 and was slated for OS X Panther but was pulled for whatever reason. It's not uncommon for a patent to take years to be granted, hence the term "patent pending."

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
    3. Re:Prior art? by misleb · · Score: 2
      Almost every PC bios used in the last 3 or 4 years supports booting from USB.


      Not in my experience. Some claim to but don't do it corrently (or consistently). Some will boot USB memory stick, but not a disk, for example. It is hit an miss.

      Even if this 1/3 number you claim was correct, there are still 10s of millions more PC's in the world capable of booting from USB then there are Macs that can boot from USB. Meaning if you walk around and pick any computer you see at random (MAC or PC), you will find magnatudes more PCs capable of booting from USB.


      True, but I'd rather KNOW that my media will boot on a set of systems rather than just cross my fingers and hope. I guess it really depends on whether or not you find yourself in a Mac centric environment. For regular Mac users in certain environments, bootable external media is (and has been for many years) very useful for a wide range of purposes. My experience as a PC tech/user has been that Live Linux systems are of limited usefulness in comparison. Mostly because you end up defaulting to CD to catch all of the systems you might boot and writing data becomes a pain.

      -matthew

      --
      "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
  6. Hmm...doesnt windows have this? by dontbflat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This sure sounds a lot like romming profiles on windows. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but thats just my take on it.

    1. Re:Hmm...doesnt windows have this? by mr_matticus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Roaming profiles is a synchronization mess unless the profiles are server-managed. I've never really seen roaming profiles successfully employed outside of the corporate environment. Sure, you and I are capable of handling it, but the devil's in the details, as they say.

      If Apple pulls this off, it will be seamless and invisible and mostly foolproof--three adjectives you'll never hear associated with roaming profiles.

  7. So when... by Quaoar · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...does Apple release their 5TB iPod to help make my porn collection mobile? Or am I going to have to carry around a backpack full of them?

    --
    I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
  8. Feature removed from 10.3 by bubba451 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This was actually once promised and even advertised as part of 10.3 "Panther" and then was inexplicably removed. Here was the marketing blurb:

    Home away from home

    Ever thought you could carry your home in the palm of your hands or in your pocket? You can. Panther's Home on iPod feature lets you store your home directory - files, folders, apps - on your iPod (or any FireWire hard drive) and take it with you wherever you go. When you find yourself near a Panther-equipped Mac, just plug in the iPod, log in, and you're "home," no matter where you happen to be. And when you return to your home computer, you can synchronize any changes you've made to your files by using File Sync, which automatically updates offline changes to your home directory.

    Mac Rumors has some of the history.

    1. Re:Feature removed from 10.3 by NatasRevol · · Score: 4, Interesting

      At the time, according to some, the real problem was the hard drive of the iPod it isn't/wasn't designed to be used as a real HD, running for hours continuously. Hence the cache and spin up/spin down. Yeah, it saves on battery life, but it also saves the HD life.

      But I still put OS X, drive utils & my home dir there. Very nice if you have accounts on your work & home mac. And my iPod is still going 4 yrs later, so I guess it wasn't too hard, or I got lucky.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  9. They are waiting for the right time.... by d0n+quix0te · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... to turn on a new business model. I am pretty sure that Apple is waiting for two things before they release this feature. First, next generation EFI based PCs and second for 8GB flash memory to come down in pricing.

    This way, you could safely run OS X off the portable device (mini-hard drives in iPods are not meant to take repeated read/writes...). Apple will then make a business of selling a 'home to go' device that you can take with you and plug into any next gen PC. Voila! Instant access to all your Apps and files.

    This way they can make up any lost sales of OS X/Mac by selling us a portable device.

    -S

  10. [offtopic] Binary fun by toadlife · · Score: 5, Funny

    "There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.

    So what is the third type? Those who think they can?

    --
    I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
    1. Re:[offtopic] Binary fun by camperdave · · Score: 3, Informative

      Duh! Obviously the guy is one of the ones who CANNOT count in binary.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    2. Re:[offtopic] Binary fun by Firehed · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Only on Slashdot could a post like that get +1, Informative. Somewhat ironic that it truly is informative.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    3. Re:[offtopic] Binary fun by goldmeer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't."

      "So what is the third type? Those who think they can?"

      That would be correct. And you are one of them.

      0 - The unwashed masses that do not realise that you can have a yes/no value represented by one bit
      1 - The clueful
      10 - "Psuedonerds" that almost "get it"
      11 - I can only guess "underwear gnomes with hot grits"

      The joke should have been:
      There are 1 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
      (Boy that would drive the grammar nazis craaaazy!)

    4. Re:[offtopic] Binary fun by gutnor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "There are 1 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't."

      No no

      There are indeed 10 types of people in the world:
                  0 - the geeks with 9 fingers who also counts 5 cans in a six-pack.
                  1 - the not-geek with 10 fingers
                10 - the geeks with 10 fingers

  11. In the 90's by LennyDotCom · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used to have an external SCSI HD that I booted from on my mac. Back then I could plug it in to any Mac and boot to my Desktop with all my software I thought that was so awsome. Someone had a boot problen or what ever I just plugged in my HD booted then fixed it.

    I life was so easy then

    --
    http://Lenny.com
    1. Re:In the 90's by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why just the home directory? Why not put an entire OS install in a VM and carry that around with you? I saw a demo last year by a guy from IBM doing that. He kept his OS and local files on a Xen image on a USB flash drive. It would resume state when he plugged it into a machine and if there was an Internet connection it could even establish a VPN connection back home and mount a remote share. When he suspended the VM, he didn't just take his documents with him, he took his entire machine state.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:In the 90's by eclectic4 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "I used to have an external SCSI HD that I booted from on my mac. Back then I could plug it in to any Mac and boot to my Desktop with all my software I thought that was so awsome. Someone had a boot problen or what ever I just plugged in my HD booted then fixed it. I life was so easy then"
       
      I don't understand this statement, or why it was modded up. Go out and buy a 100 GB Firelite (or any external FW drive, FireLites can just fit in your pocket and are bus powered meaning no external power whatsoever, just a FW cord), clone your entire Mac to it, and boot it on any other Mac by holding down the option key on boot and selecting it. The Mac will find any mounted volumes with a blessed OS installed on it and you can boot from whichever one you choose. Been able to to this for years. I have a Firelite with three partitions on it, one is simply a clone of my home Mac that I can boot to and run and diagnostics, directory fixer-uppers, etc.., on the now mounted internal drive. I can copy files, whatever I want, and the other two partitions on my Firelite are images of Tiger and Panther install DVD's that I can use for installs (or archive and installs). Can fix almost all software issues on a Mac with a thing that I can easily fit in my front pocket. No CD's, DVD's, laptops, etc...

      --

      "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
  12. So Apple patents automounting home directories ? by ccandreva · · Score: 4, Funny

    Amazing. To bad nobody thought of that 20 years ago.

    Oh wait.

  13. Can already do this with Yellow Dog Linux by billdar · · Score: 3, Informative
    Put a complete Yellow Dog Linux install on your iPod and reboot any PPC mac into your entire OS with all your settings and applications. When on the move, it still plays your music and can be used with iTunes.

    Even IBM does this to recover dead PC's.

    Does this mean I can declare prior art? Get my lawyer on the bat-phone

    --
    I am billdar, and I approve this message.
  14. Re:In the palm of your hand? by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, but it's in a proprietary encrypted format which is unreadable without specialized equipment. (That has all been reverse-engineered to read the format: the original creator refuses to open their toolkit.)

    --
    'Sensible' is a curse word.
  15. Re:In the palm of your hand? by dmd · · Score: 2, Funny

    You must have really fucking tiny palms if that's all you can carry.

  16. evil by oohshiny · · Score: 2, Informative

    This feature has been available under UNIX for more than two decades. For Apple to patent this is really evil.

  17. Re:So Apple patents automounting home directories by joe_bruin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It would be fairly simple to create a PAM module and daemon that, when detecting a USB device with certain information on it (say a passwd file), could mount that disk in /home/thatuser (overriding file permissions so that all items are owned by that user and nodev, nosuid), and allow that user to log in. It would not take any more modifications than that to make any Linux or BSD system be capable of doing roaming profiles on a removable drive. Quick, someone implement it!

  18. Absolutely correct by mbessey · · Score: 4, Informative

    The original iPod hard drives (from the 5 and 10 GB models) had a very short guaranteed run time. That wasn't a problem for the iPod as a music player, or for occasional file transfer, since the drive was turned off 90% or more of the time. OS X likes to write to the home directory frequently, though, so "Portable Home Directories" (as they were known at the time) had the potential to wear out the iPod's hard drive very quickly (a matter of weeks or months).

    It turns out that the ACTUAL run time to failure for those drives was typically much longer than promised, so lots of folks have had success with using them as "live" drives. I have no idea what the specs on the current generation of iPod hard drives are, but I'd bet they're considerably more durable.

    Hey, what do you know - Toshiba has published the specifications for the original 5GB iPod drive online:
    http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/storage/english/spec/hdd /mk5002.htm#relia

    That page claims a "product life" of "5 years or 20,000 POH (Power-On-Hours)". 20,000 hours is just over 2.25 years of continuous operation. Given that you can get a 2-year warranty for an iPod through AppleCare these days, that doesn't sound like a very good risk.

    I don't happen to have a copy of the original spec sheet we got with the first-generation drives, but my recollection is that the quoted life span was much shorter - short enough that warranty returns for worn-out drives was a real concern if they were kept running all the time, even with the shorter warranties offered at the time (anybody else remember 90-day iPod warranties?).

    Of course, for Flash devices (like those in the Shuffle and Nano) the lifetime is specified in terms of a certain number of write operations, rather than total time "turned on". The expected lifetime for an iPod Shuffle used as a home directory is probably very very long - dozens of years.

  19. From 2002? by catdevnull · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From TFA:

    Inventors: Bowers; Robert T (Cupertino, CA), Ko; Steve (San Francisco, CA)
    Assignee: Apple Computer, Inc. (Cupertino, CA)
    Appl. No.: 10/304,291
    Filed: November 25, 2002

    Maybe I don't know how to read these legal eagle documents and stuff, but it seems like this was filed some time ago. I don't think this has much bearing to 10.5 when this was filed when 10.2 was fresh on the shelves.

    --

    I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
  20. Re:The Patent by ellem · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ugh I hate these nonsense emails.

    So much crap in this one I don't even know how much the V14gr4 is...

    --
    This .sig is fake but accurate.
  21. Re:As an Apple fanboy ... by type40 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Then you must sell any organs that you can do without and get a second Mac.
    Just sell both your kidneys, then you can have a Mac at home and the dialysis clinic!!

    --
    "You can see I know very little about pimp policy." George McGovern.
  22. Re:As an Apple fanboy ... by kitzilla · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sorry: the kidneys went for my now-obsolete dual G5 PowerMac (one kidney for each IBM processor). In any case, Macs are cheaper these days: even a minor organ like a spleen ought to cover pretty much anyone's desktop needs.

    But I like the way you think ...

    --
    This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
  23. Unix 10 years ago? by katorga · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hmmm. NIS, automounter, and NFS file servers for /home. I could log into any system I was allowed to and my home dir, files, .profiles and X windows config was just as I left it.

    Hmmm. Active Directory roaming profiles.

    Hmmm. Linux, LDAP, automounter, and a remote home directory.

    Hmmmm. Knoppix + ~/user on a flashdrive.

  24. It won't be a DRM limitation by zoeblade · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe for movies the studios are demanding only the paying user can view on their iPod - so movie downloads will be tied to a user account on each device.

    That seeems unlikely. They're already tied to an iTunes account (the kind that can be used on up to five computers and an unlimited number of iPods), so why also tie them to an OS X user account? I'm guessing that since Apple manage the former on their servers, it's a lot easier for them to keep track of what you're up to.