Restricting iTunes access

[Crazy-Horse]

Hi folks,

Basically my situation is this: My sister is in the process of opening a cafe, and wants a couple of computers available to customers for internet access. I've convinced her that the best option in terms of looks/price ratio would be a couple of refurb iMac 17's, or possibly G5 iMac's from ebay

Another thing I'll have to set up is the music system for the cafe. I'm trying to keep things as economical as possible, and was wondering if there was any way for me to have itunes running on one of these public computers to play the music, but only allow any access to the iTunes program window via an administrator password? I haven't come across any obvious way of doing this, but then I do have a tendency to miss the obvious... anyone have any ideas that may help?

Thanks

 

[WildCowboy]

The first thing that popped to my mind was enabling Fast User Switching. Have one account for iTunes, and then have a second for everything else. You can even use Parental Controls on that second account to keep things locked down pretty well. Songs playing through iTunes on the first account will continue playing once you switch to the second account.

 

[Crazy-Horse]

I've just tried this, playing iTunes on my admin account then logging into a guest account and it seems that, while iTunes keeps chugging away in my background account, the sound doesn't make it through to the guest desktop, hmm... maybe it disables the sound to allow the guest user to run iTunes at the same time?

 

[macfaninpdx]

I am not sure if this is true, but I seem to recall that if you are playing iTunes to remote speakers (e.g. Airport Express), you can use the Fast-User switching and it will continue playing. I don't have a set-up where I can test this though, but if my memory serves me correctly (which is often doesn't), this is what I used to do.

 

[theBB]

I am not sure if this is true, but I seem to recall that if you are playing iTunes to remote speakers (e.g. Airport Express), you can use the Fast-User switching and it will continue playing. I don't have a set-up where I can test this though, but if my memory serves me correctly (which is often doesn't), this is what I used to do.

Yes, I can vouch for this observation. The internal speakers stop playing the music if you switch to another user, but if iTunes was streaming music to an Airport Express, the remote speakers keep working fine. I also assume the switched off user's iTunes keeps sharing its library.

Of course, I don't know whether this helps OP's planned audio setup. As a cafe needs quite a few speakers scattered around, it might be better to wire them up to a cheap boombox that can play MP3 CDs set to "random." However, if wiring is not economical or practical than a few Airport Expresses streaming to a few remote speakers might work out fine.

 

[Crazy-Horse]

Thats great guys, its definitely something I'd like to do personally but my sis is a bit of a technophobe, and I most likely wouldn't be in the country to help her out if anything ever went wrong with the streaming, so I'll probably have to stick with the low-tech solution

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Why not turn on Screensaver password protection? Messing with account switching isn't very elegant.

System Preferences>Security: Require Password to wake from Sleep or Screensaver.
Then you can set your Saver to turn on in 1 minute and/or make an expose hot corner to turn on the screensaver. Sounds like the ideal fix IMO.

 

[Crazy-Horse]

That would be fine for locking down iTunes, but I also need the computer to be accessible to customers for web browsing use, without their being able to access iTunes and mess around with the music, those darn customers...