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My wall calendar says 2000, cyberspace is no longer a science fiction fantasy, and the demands placed on my Macintosh rival those of HAL. In the early days of personal computers, it was rare for a home computer to be shared among several users. Rarer still was the need to share a modem. Today my teenage son downloads his class notes from the school's web site. My wife wades though her daily flood of email. Even our dog's food is ordered online. My once-personal computer is now the family's public access terminal. I need a way to protect my Quicken files and lock out the Internet's red-light district. The solution to this juggling act in our house is MacOS 9.
MacOS 9 has the ability to switch personalities, to change the way it looks, acts, and responds to each individual user. Users are given an account with one of three different modes of access: Normal, Limited, or Panels. Think of them as conventional, restricted, and training wheels. Normal mode is the traditional Finder interface. Limited users have access to only a subset of the programs and documents on the system. Panel users don't even see the Finder; they get a tabbed-folder launcher that contains application aliases and documents.
A user can access his or her account by either typing a password or speaking a pre-recorded phrase into the microphone. (James Bond eat your heart out.) Once unlocked, the Mac finishes booting, and presents the user with a customized interface.
In Limited and Panel modes, only that specific users applications and documents are useable. Moreover, some MacOS 9 savvy applications save individual preference settings, so you can say goodbye to bookmarks in your web browser from
yukkystuff.com. There is also optional control of the CD-ROM drive. When Multi-user is coupled with
KidSafe, parents have unprecedented control over both their local hard drives and the internet.
KidSafe, which requires MacOS 9, is one of the new services delivered on Apple's recently redesigned web site. Once enabled, it blocks access to all but about fifty thousand kid-friendly web sites. Each web page request, made by either typing a URL or clicking on a link, will only be honored if it is on the list of approved sites.
Sherlock 2 is KidSafe aware, and will permit searches on words that traditional filters typically block, like sex. But instead of a porn-site menu mixed with health information, Sherlock will only report sites on the KidSafe list. Each user can be assigned a different KidSafe profile, and while there is no way to block selected sites on the approved list, parents can add sites that they determine to be acceptable.
With MacOS 9 you can allow someone access to your Mac without having to worry that your Quicken Folder will be deleted or your private collection of dancing hamster screenshots will be discovered. It will keep kids from discovering that whitehouse.com is not the same as
whitehouse.gov, and it will leave you wondering how you ever got along without
it.
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"The
Many Faces of MacOS 9"
