Multiple User Accounts.... ?! help!

[whyrichard]

Hello dear Mac community!!!

for those of you who are not on the probook threads....



me and my lovely girlfriend now live together, through we presently only have one mac between the two of us. I know how to set up a different account for her, and to set up fast user switching, but i was wondering about programs...


-can i have all her mail accounts be seperate, using apple's mail program?
-can we still share the itunes library?
-can she have her own safari bookmarks and preferences?

essentially, how do i control which programs are shared between users and which are not?


thanks!


r.

 

[jimthorn]

can i have all her mail accounts be seperate, using apple's mail program?

Yes, like all apps on OS X, Mail uses the preferences set up for the active user, including mail account settings and such. It will "just work".

can she have her own safari bookmarks and preferences?

Yes, for the same reason.

can we still share the itunes library?

This is a bit trickier. As with my other answers, the OS uses the current user's preferences and files with the shared applications to give each user privacy and their own unique experience. iTunes by default stores its files and database of music in the active user's Music folder. Thus each user would have their own Music folder and iTunes database, not shared between users.

You can however open up iTunes, go to the iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General. There you will see a field marked iTunes Music Folder Location. You can change this to a shared folder location that both accounts have access to.

essentially, how do i control which programs are shared between users and which are not?

All programs are accessable to both users, but the personalized data is not shared between users unless you go out of your way to do it (as above).

 

[whyrichard]

thank you very much for your response!

one more question:


when mail is active in both user accounts, is there twice the ram usage?
thanks,
r.

 

[MisterMe]

thank you very much for your response!

one more question:


when mail is active in both user accounts, is there twice the ram usage?
thanks,
r.

MacOS X is a preemptive, multitasking OS. You are thinking in terms of cooperative multitasking. The email coming into your system comprise a very small percentage of the total number of tasks running on it.

 

[ChrisA]

I think you ment to say "Is there twice the disk space usage?" Yes. There are two emails stored.. RAM is not used for permenent storage that's what the disk is for.

She can delete her copy and it will not effect your copy. Data is stored for each user. Programs are stored in a common area. Well, that is the defaul but can be changed with some minor effort.

THe basic rule is "each user has thier own folder where thier data are kept". Remember Mac OS is based on UNIX and UNIX predates the PC era. Back when UNIX was developed it was common to have 20 or more people each siting at a termal screen with all those terminal screen connected to the SAME computer. The system is desigen to make each user _think_ he has exclusive use of a computer. Mac OS still allows this if you can find a way to physically connect multiple terminals. "fast user switching" is one way to simulate multiple terminals as it does not log off the first user. Another way is to use "telnet" from another computer or to bring up multiple termial sessions. You Mac runs that old UNIX OS written in the 80's under the nice looking user interface.