Monday, March 15, 2010 |
08:57 - wePad
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10702190/1/ipad-has-user-log-in-flaw.html
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Interesting take from Anton Wahlman of TheStreet.com:
Just like the iPod Touch, the iPhone and most or even all other smartphones, the iPad lacks multiple user profile logins, including any "Guest" login.
Think of the iPad as one big iPod Touch or iPhone. Once you've entered the password, you're in. And I mean in! You have complete access to all emails, instant messages, the address book and calendar. Contrast this with a laptop: On a PC, you may have, say, four different user logins (father, mother, son and daughter) and one generic "Guest" login. This means you can't see others' emails, instant messages, address books, calendars and any other documents created. Privacy is protected.
. . .
The fact of the matter is that the iPad is a lot more like a laptop than a smartphone in terms of how you need to protect your information. You wouldn't let your kids use your laptop under your personal login, with access to your emails, address book, documents, and instant messages. This will force parents and others to not sync their personal information -- through iTunes and MobileMe -- with the iPad, at which point the iPad has immediately lost a material portion of its intended utility.
He may have a point. I'm not sure a "guest" account (or multiple user accounts of any kind) would solve the problem, though; even ignoring the user-interface complexity you'd incur by making it possible (and unavoidable) to switch between users and log in at a prompt, making only a particular user's iPod and address-book activities sync with the host PC is far from a slam-dunk. There are a zillion other apps with private data that would have similar sensitivity in syncing. Would "guest" users (and all users except the "primary" syncing user) only get access to a few core cut-down apps?
He's astute to say that the likely unintended consequence of this setup is that people will elect not to sync their data, in order to protect it. There's a password lock, obviously, but that's only going to offer a certain level of protection; beyond that, I'm having trouble thinking of a way to poke a hole in his contention.
Whatever form the solution might take, if solution there must be, will probably have to involve a reengineering by Apple, and a fairly fundamental one at that. Parental controls preventing on-device modification of critical data or purchasing music or apps? Stronger password schemes? "Cancel or Allow"?
Or maybe they just won't address it at all, and will rely on expecting usage patterns to conform to the device rather than the other way around. Unlikely; but it'd be very unlike them not to have thought through something like this, especially considering all the 24/7 real-world usage it's undoubtedly had in testers' hands by now.
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