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Do you allow other people to use your Mac?

Legolamb

Legolamb

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 27, 2006
627
0
North of where I'd like to be
There are only three other people that I would allow to use my Mac for more than 5 minutes without me shadowing them. It seems stronger with my laptops than desktops, but only barely, and has nothing to do with expense or being afraid that they'd read my documents. I share clothes, books, DVD's, etc. so I'm not entirely selfish.
In general, I find my relationship to my MacBookPro similar to the one I had with my old Rapidographic drawing pen. In the case of the pen, the nob actually conforms to your hand. In the Mac, I don't know. It's intimate in a very tangible, yet strange way.
How many people do you allow on your computer?
 
Three.

The g5-iMac is used by me, my wife and our house-mate, but we're all adults and fortunately, the house-mate has his own PC laptop and doesn't do anything other than surf on our computers.Our eMac is also up for general usage when it's plugged in, which isn't often lately (we've currently got limited networking in our house, so wireless rigs get more use).

However, when the stork delivers the soon-to-be-purchased new Mac, I'll probably be hovering over my wife's shoulder, and the house-mate will only get to visit it from afar! :D

I know what you mean about your laptop. If I decide on a laptop purchase, I know from previous experience that I'll be loathe to let it out of my sight.

Preferable number on the latest Mac in the house? One.




<edit> Homonym related spelling errors before bed.
 
I've let friends use it, only for surfing though. And they don't go unsupervised for very long. I've never left anyone totally alone with her... I mean it. :p
 
I'd let my boyfriend use any of the Macs I own(ed).
Event lent my iBook to a casual friend for well over a month. :eek:

But I was a lot more 'precious' about my gorgeous little PB, which is now in my sister's possession.
 
For my desktops, whoever... I usually just oversee 'em all to make sure nothing gets ruffled.

With my laptop I'm more careful -mainly two others, who I feel fine lending the PowerBook to whenever.
 
Normally, just Lori gets to touch my PB. And even then, I normally have her switch to her account - just in case.

Last week, for the first time, I let someone use her it for more than 15 min without me hovering.
 
Yes, sparingly. But short of being sworn in, they must promise first, to not have any liquids nearby, and to wash their hands if they've just eaten anything. ;)
 
Plymouthbreezer said:
For my desktops, whoever... I usually just oversee 'em all to make sure nothing gets ruffled.

With my laptop I'm more careful -mainly two others, who I feel fine lending the PowerBook to whenever.
Click to expand...

Same here. But I let my roommate use my PM G5 whenever he wants, no hovering. My iBook? I better like you a whole lot. I usually don't let anyone touch it. :)
 
I let anyone use my iMac, I'm a tad more picky with my iBook, only because I got the logic board fixed, and the guy said to be careful with it. Only my friends, family and brothers can use it.
 
My wife has her own account, so she gets to set it up her way...and there's one account labeled "Guest", which is used primarily by my college age daughter. Her printer is broken so she typically prints her files from my computer.
 
xsedrinam said:
Yes, sparingly. But short of being sworn in, they must promise first, to not have any liquids nearby, and to wash their hands if they've just eaten anything. ;)
Click to expand...

I always make sure people wash their hands after I know they've eaten something.. seems like people always want to get on the computer right after they eat pizza ;)
 
quite often, they never understand how to click as it doesn't have click-on-trackpad on as I hate it.
 
miniConvert said:
Nu uh. Mine. All mine. Get your dirty hands off!

Letting the staff use the iMac's around the office has been quite heart breaking.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I’m with you, miniConvert. It’s not just a matter of user accounts, making sure about the proper hygiene and care users display when using the machine. I don’t have these issues with any other “personal” technologies like my cell phone. My husband has this thing about his car, creating a personality for it, pampering it, not allowing our daughter to even consider it as an extra set of wheels. I don’t get it for a car; he doesn’t get it for my Mac. BTW, I had to share computers at uni (Mac and those others) and it was only sharing the Macs that bothered me. Fetish, anyone;) ?
 
I usually ask them to take my MBP home so they can play with it as much as they can. I even gave it to 5 children to play with it without an adult being with them. All to convince them, a Mac is so much better than a PC, you'll love it in a day of use.

I guess I am more into convincing others of how good the Mac is instead of taking care of my MBP.
 
no one except me...

I cannot let anyone touch my Macs. So far, all of my Macs do not require any repair service to this day (which means I don't have to hand them over to someone). I cannot take my Mac with me for air travel because I don't want to let TSA touch my Macs or putting Macs in the dirty plastic box at the security screening (yikes!). I just don't like greasy hands touching my machines and keyboards. I always wash my hands after I had to use one of those "public" keyboards at my work.
 
I'll let anyone use it...they're pretty good on computers, and anything I don't want them to see is well hidden (hidden disk image w/ password).

The only person I wouldn't let use it is my brother because he could find some things I wouldn't want him to, and he also loves to **** up my computer. He's really anal about computers- he's always looking at the system monitor and ending any nonessential task, dashboard gets turned off, etc. I told him he should use that text-based browser.
 
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