Well, I don't see the iPad as a personal device. (That's my iPhone) I see it as a household appliance, like a toaster.. It's the itunes/spotify player, the second screen when we don't want to watch the same thing, something guests can use and so on.. It would be a great device for iMessage, FaceTime, social media and email but now we almost never use it for any of that because it's only one person who can be logged in to all of it and logging in and out all the time sucks.. I understand that Apple want us to buy several iPads but I think a lot of people don't use them enough to motivate the cost just to save a minute on logging in to stuff every time you pick it up. So, with multiple account we would be 2x happy, use it 2x as much and probably replace it 2x as fast.. Win/win
Again, an appliance doesn't hold private data, whereas once you're sharing iMessage, email and social media, then that has to actually be secured. Considering how much email used to access real things, like resetting passwords for banking and mortgage websites...
Do you leave access to your online banking on a device, even if it has multiple user accounts, where your password might be guessable from finger prints on the screen? Even Touch ID requires entering the password after reboot.
And now we have multiple users, where likely parents will want access to children's account data, while keeping theirs inaccessible to others. How many security holes will there be once they create this whole security issue that previously never even existed? How many edge cases in the sandboxing model will have to be sorted out?
Each account's data is tied to Apple ID / iCloud accounts. Including the guests? Children, who aren't old enough to legally have an account?
When you backup the device to your computer, then you're backing up everyone else's data, or just your account's? Does it separately download separately encrypted account files, so you can't actually sync others' data, just back it up? Either it's again insecure, or now you can make a backup, and then someone else backs it up to their computer, but syncs their data, but now you restore the device from your backup and you've corrupted everyone else's data except your own? Maybe you stick with iCloud backup, to solve this, but now you need to use N times the amount of data to do backups. Assuming your kids can have iCloud accounts.
Who is allowed to do app updates? Anyone, or just one special user, like the main user in Family Sharing? Maybe it just auto-updates. Oh you want to hold off on that new iOS update for now? Previous version bricked devices or iCloud data required a matching OS X update for iCloud data access. Hopefully the guest or non-tech partner won't update it then...
Who gets to delete whose data when the device is full? Like movies or photos. Will that sync back and remove them from that user's other devices? Did you know they needed that movie or photo for something, I mean there are so many people using that device, how is everyone else supposed to know?
This is a feature request for those who haven't thought through or don't understand the implications.
And it would reduce security for those who do understand, and choose iOS over Android, for its better security.
A phone is a luxury in my world. I keep a regular old plain vanilla cell phone with a pre-paid plan and spend about $8 a month total ($100 a year renewable for 1000 minutes with rollover). Spending $70+ a month for something that is 100% unnecessary (i.e. you don't NEED to read email and surf the web while at McDonalds or at work and heaven forbid while driving). People that think they NEED to do that or even "text" (waste of time/money) are ADDICTED to that crap. I'm not someone who barely uses the Internet either. But it's not much fun doing it on a tiny touchscreen, IMO and I sure as hell don't need to get fired over it (or in an accident). It can damn well WAIT. Texting is the scourge of the 21st Century, IMO. A bunch of worthless talk about NOTHING. Worse yet, it's incredibly distracting and cars are weaving all over the road with people trying to text while driving (apparently people don't want to actually "talk" today, just ask each other what they're doing). But basically, I have better things I could do with $70 a month including buying a new Macbook Pro about every other year instead.
A laptop may or may not be a luxury depending on whether you need it for a job. If you just want it to surf while slurping lattes at Starbucks, I'd call it a luxury. Personally, I prefer surfing at home with a 27" monitor, full size keyboard and 5-button mouse with a scroll wheel over some tiny 15" screen and a miserable trackpad (they're HARD and cause finger/wrist pain over long periods of time IMO) and undersized keyboard.
Yeah sure, it's all expensive and anti-social. But, not everyone has a static day-to-day routine of commuting between fixed place of work and home. Many people work at customer sites, bounce between 5+ daily lectures and labs at school, run deliveries all day, sell door to door, etc.