Chris Anderson

iPhone OS 4.0 and multiple user accounts

After sharing one iPad amongst my coworkers for two days now, I’d bet money that Thursday’s iPhone OS 4.0 announcement will bring multiple user accounts to the iPad (and possibly the iPhone). The iPad is too pricey for Apple to reasonably expect every person in a household to own one (though I’m sure they can dream). But because it’s so portable, it’s ridiculously easy to pass from person to person and thus makes multiple user accounts needed, much more than they are on an iPhone. The kids can have the user account with the games, while the parents can have the user account with the news apps (and, of course, the games). Coupled with iTunes content eventually hosted in the cloud (from Apple’s Lala purchase) each user account could directly access the entirety of their individual content without worrying about managing manual iTunes syncs.

With apps and iTunes content currently tied to a single iTunes account, it’s difficult to allow multiple people to purchase content on host it on the same iPad. If I want to buy and read a book on a coworker’s iPad, I would have to login as them on the device, which can mess up syncing and other app settings. Or I’d need to ask them to buy it, pay them in cash, but realize that the book will be forever tied to their iTunes account, not mine.

A user account system could even sync to individual iTunes accounts on a computer. The admin on the device could set how much space each user is allocated, and iTunes would fill each account to the allotted space.

In practice, I think it would be remarkably easy to implement a multi-user system on an iPad. You could tap your user account on the lock screen, enter your password, and view your own person home screen. You’d be able to log out, or the iPad could prompt a user to re-login after a certain time period.

I’m not sure if such a system would be quite as useful on an iPhone or iPod Touch, but if Apple would implement it on an iPad, I’m sure it could easily carry over. I think multiple user accounts on an iPad would be a HUGE feature and would make managing a single iPad much more convenient among households and businesses. Sounds exciting to me!