OSX To Feature Portable User Accounts? 245
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.'"
Ultra portable (Score:4, 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. 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.
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or a DRM limitation (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't be a DRM limitation (Score:3, 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.
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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
Impressive (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:The Patent (Score:4, Interesting)
So much crap in this one I don't even know how much the V14gr4 is...
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Actually, when going from a Powermac G5 to my mac pro, I had my 'user folder' was actually another hard drive.
When I switched, I simply plugged in my old hard drive to the new computer, created a user, and pointed the user folder to the hard drive.
It had preferences for all the programs I hadn't even installed yet, complete with serial numbers and registra
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Windows has always included tools to migrate user data from one system to another, and of course Windows Server has allowed centralised user data storage since the NT4.0 days through roaming profiles.
Windows Vista contains several new tools to automate migration, backup, import and export of user data, and even more beneficial, Vista is designed from the start to combine the profile data, user f
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Ideally, internet access should be fast and everywhere.
When you have internet access fast and everywhere, it is obvious to then store your stuff on it.
While this is very convenient for us it is also very convenient for the US govt to carefully spy on everyone, so I am surprised this has not been made mandatory by the US world government DRM
= instant rootkit! (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.
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I don't know where I'm going with this.
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"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 thos
Re:[offtopic] Binary fun (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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Yes, you can. But when you're talking about real types, you assign them a value. The existance of null-persons is always implied.
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Re:= instant rootkit! (Score:4, Funny)
Prior art? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Prior art? (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 [inter-mezzo.org] 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...
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In other words, I could install both the OS or keep my user account on the iPod HDD. In comparison Knoppix has only been around since 2002, hasn't it?
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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.
Hmm...doesnt windows have this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Hmm...doesnt windows have this? (Score:4, Insightful)
If Apple pulls this off, it will be seamless and invisible and mostly foolproof--three adjectives you'll never hear associated with roaming profiles.
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Drat - I just feel for your flamebait...
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What you CAN'T do is plug in a thumb drive and have Windows automatically detect the user information and add the user information to the OS. You have to use the Wizard, etc. Though you could probably hack this somehow with autorun.inf files.
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That asside, at a university, the place is usually awash with apps, but where are your documents? In your flash drive or email, if you keep them on the server, how do you get them from home (scp will do, but it's not the easiest to use relative to "click here, do that.")
So when... (Score:5, Funny)
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Feature removed from 10.3 (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 [macrumors.com] has some of the history.
In the palm of your hand? (Score:2)
I know that I can carry my entire genome in the palm of my hand... about 15,000,000 copies of it. Beat that!
Re:In the palm of your hand? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Feature removed from 10.3 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Absolutely correct (Score:5, Informative)
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/hd
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.
They are waiting for the right time.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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But this makes you choose between your 8GB of music and your 8GB of apps+docs. Not a whole lot of room if you start sharing that space.
I would assume that they would allow, or maybe require!, the music directory to not be synced, since in theory it's on the music side of the iPod. Mine, however, is on a separate, larger partition.
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Apple doesn't want you to have a pc, Apple wants you to have a Mac for use of OS X. {insert 3.PROFIT!!!-comment here}
In the 90's (Score:3, Interesting)
I life was so easy then
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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 whatsoeve
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So Apple patents automounting home directories ? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait.
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Re:So Apple patents automounting home directories (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's yet another case of
Mac fanboy says: "UNIX could have implemented it but didn't bother"
UNIX user says: "UNIX could have implemented but didn't because it's a stupid idea."
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.mac (Score:2)
What is missing is my library files, x-windows config and the like. So much is stuffed into the library files, mine is over 2GB, that I don't see how I c
yes, some sort of "archive" format might work (Score:2)
Which program (Score:2)
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Can already do this with Yellow Dog Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Even IBM does this [slashdot.org] to recover dead PC's.
Does this mean I can declare prior art? Get my lawyer on the bat-phone
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Take your iPod, plug it into another Mac, and log into that home directory. Where there has never been a user account for that home directory on the host Mac.
What you described can be done with OS X as well. I've done it on my iPod for about 4 years now. Install a bunch of disk tools on the iPod, and you have a great troubleshooting device.
It's hard to see the benefit. (Score:2)
Roaming Profiles (Score:2)
Still, would be nice to have, if they can solve the massive security risks.
There's no way to solve it (Score:2)
The risk is what's being touted as the "feature".
Come on, seriously: a portable device establishing system authentication policy after system boot? If the whole thing talks to something like LDAP, fine (but whose directory? and under what circumstances?), but then there's no need for the device except as a drive. If it doesn't talk to something like LDAP it's essentially by definition insecure.
iPod you say? Why yes! (Score:2)
Lessee... Get Info... Calculating... (Score:2)
Only 12? (Score:2)
evil (Score:3, Informative)
In what sense? (Score:2)
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Don't get me wrong: this feature makes sense for the Mac environment. But Apple didn't invent storing accounts on removable media, and their particular combination of features represents a policy choice, not a new invention.
Software patents are a fact of life. (Score:2)
For example, would Bell have developed the telephone if he hadn't believed he'd be able to profit from it?
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Apple may have made a different choice, for example by having the login process recognize an external storage device. But that's a configuration choice, not an invention.
Old Planned Feature (Score:2, Redundant)
This shouldn't be patentable. It's been done ... (Score:2)
Really? (Score:2)
Not applications. Not data. The account - including all security information and preferences.
In *NIX operating systems, account data is stored in a single repository, usually files in
New? (Score:2)
And we aren't able to do that yet?
I don't think you've thought this through. (Score:2)
For example: If the user's encrypted password is stored on the external device, what permission/rights does that user get to files on the internal hard drive? What rights are granted to the host computer for accessing the data on the external device?
Long live the NeXT! (Score:2)
From 2002? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Erm...prior art? (Score:2)
No one remembers NeXTstep? (Score:2)
What was that? Late 80s, early 90s? Of course, with Apple owning NeXTstep and morphing into OS X, it's no surprise they'd eventually roll out a similar feature. I am surprised by the patent. And, it begs the question, can this feature from NeXT be used as prior art against
Isn't this already possible... and then some? (Score:2)
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As an Apple fanboy ... (Score:2)
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Just sell both your kidneys, then you can have a Mac at home and the dialysis clinic!!
Re:As an Apple fanboy ... (Score:4, 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 ...
I don't get it. (Score:2)
I've been doing this, using rsync, for years. On sane operating systems where your whole account lives in one directory (as opposed to insane ones where it's spread among half a dozen locations) this is just something that automatically works. What's the big deal?
Unix 10 years ago? (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmm. Active Directory roaming profiles.
Hmmm. Linux, LDAP, automounter, and a remote home directory.
Hmmmm. Knoppix + ~/user on a flashdrive.
Interesting if they add encryption & external (Score:2)
1. ipod phone will almost certainly have a camera - how nice would it be if you could "automatically" log in with a quick iris scan?
2. what if the device autmated "synced" snapshot backups? If the
Close, but not the future: (Score:2)
I'm sure some of the latest phones have at least pentium functionality. Now can I get my USB hub with VGA out and bad ass (windowsmobile/w
It's already out there... sort of (Score:2)