Multiple users on an iPad - possible?

[parish]

It occurred to me last night that an iPhone/iPod Touch syncs with the account you are logged into your Mac with so that's the mail account(s) that are copied to the device. This is fine as these are personal devices.

However, what about the iPad? It seems to me that this is more of a multi-user device (or is quite likely to be used as such) - one iPad that the whole family uses - so how can it handle multiple setups, especially mail but browser bookmarks etc.?

After all, you probably don't want the kids (or even SWMBO ) reading your e-mails and unless you add their mail account(s) to your Mail setup they won't be able to read theirs.

Obviously multi-user won't be possible under iPhone OS 3.2 and I can not see anything about this in the OS 4 info on the Apple website.

Any comments/suggestions?

 

[Bentron]

It occurred to me last night that an iPhone/iPod Touch syncs with the account you are logged into your Mac with so that's the mail account(s) that are copied to the device. This is fine as these are personal devices.

However, what about the iPad? It seems to me that this is more of a multi-user device (or is quite likely to be used as such) - one iPad that the whole family uses - so how can it handle multiple setups, especially mail but browser bookmarks etc.?

After all, you probably don't want the kids (or even SWMBO ) reading your e-mails and unless you add their mail account(s) to your Mail setup they won't be able to read theirs.

Obviously multi-user won't be possible under iPhone OS 3.2 and I can not see anything about this in the OS 4 info on the Apple website.

Any comments/suggestions?

I know what you mean, it seems perfectly obvious to us that multiple users is obvious. Apple is taking the "If you don't like it, buy another iPad" approach.

Although thinking about it, multiple users could get a little messy and cluttered, it'd depend how they were to do it. For example: Slide the lock screen then you prompted with pictures of the users of that iPad, you tap your face and it pops away, then the onscreen keyboards pops up and you type in your password. The iPad then switches Mail, Calendar, Bookmarks and Contacts to your profile.

But yes, I do agree with you that a better solution to multiple users is needed, will it come? I'm not sure it will. Perhaps when OS 4 comes out, as I think that will have some iPad specific extras bundled with it.

 

[parish]

The way I get around this on my MBP to avoid having to setup multiple logins is that the gf's e-mail is setup in Thunderbird and mine in Mail. This is not so much for privacy, but to avoid accidentally deleting (or marking as read) each others e-mails due to the unified/global Inbox, but there isn't an iPhone/iPad version of T-bird.

For Contacts, I've just setup a separate group for the gf's Contacts so that isn't so much of an issue.

Maybe this is one feature/functionality that Apple is holding back as a future major OS upgrade?

 

[TraceyS/FL]

My kids have learned to stay out of my mail, and anyone that i have handed a device to knows they get in mail - they never get it again to play games on.

The nice thing is that I can just go into setup and delete the account, and bam, no email worries.

But i'd prefer at least a "guest" account that you could pick and choose apps they could access. Maybe assign a special unlock code to it and when that is used, it presents the restricted view - or just locks them out of page 1 of the apps?

 

[Battlestar]

The tablet is a personal device and will not have multiple user accounts any time soon.

 

[4DThinker]

The tablet is a personal device and will not have multiple user accounts any time soon.

Sure it will. It's such an obvious and logical thing that Apple will eventually incorporate it into the iPad OS. The only question is will the Jailbreakers figure it out first?

Even Apple fails to see the real advantage of such a portable tablet. Just like I can hand a magazine to my wife, the iPad can be handed easily to someone else. The same is NOT true of any netbook/notebook/macbook I've seen. The very nature of the device says "pass me around". To do that securely you need user accounts or at least a guest account that is easy/quick to activate. User accounts makes perfect sense, or we wouldn't have so many threads about it here. Give it time. Have faith in Apple. The second after someone deletes an email from Steve's iPad after he hands him his iPad to experience, the dev team will be working on user accounts. I'll bet they are already.