Comments on: The Design of the Mac OS X Shutdown Feature

By: arno

arno — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 05:18:00 +0000

To require a password on startup, go to Apple > System Preferences > Accounts. Click on the lock to enable admin access, then click on the Login Options button. Uncheck the "Automatically log in as" checkbox and make sure your user account has a password specified.

Interestingly, I have a machine running Vista that has sort of the opposite problem: whenever I wake it up after going to sleep, there is a single button displayed that I have to click to continue. There's no password requested or anything. What's the point of that?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:35:00 +0000

I can’t find a way to require a password on start up after you’ve completely shut a Mac down. You can make it required for starting things after it’s been sleeping or on screensaver, but that’s it. So all someone has to do to steal your Mac and use it is shut it down. What kind of security is that?

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:32:00 +0000

Gazze:
"Ouch! Sleeping is not locking anything, and is a false sense of security. Just create a guest user and fast user switch into that."

Click on System Preferences
Click on Security
Check the box marked "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver."

Switch to a guest user? Allow passers-by to use my computer when I'm away from it? Where do you work?

As for the discussion, there are reason enough to include "Restart" and "Sleep" on the menu:

Restart - Software update sometimes wants a restart, but it typically comes up when I'm in the middle of something I don't want to pull away from. It's MY computer - let ME manage it. Give me a chance to kill that dialog, and let me worry about a reboot when I can break away. (How about an option to defer the restart until there's nothing running except the finder?)

Sleep - I'm in a meeting with my laptop on battery power. I'm taking notes, when a discussion breaks out. It's really not something I'm interested in, but out of respect I don't want to close the cover, giving away my lack of interest. But I *do* want to save the battery...

By: xhzoczk

xhzoczk — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 05:11:00 +0000

I worked at a small division of Compaq in 1995-96. We had an alien looking PC, code named “predator”. The problem with the Predators (discovered by the consumers after they bought them, of course), when they went to sleep, they wouldn’t wake up…ever. Ever since then, I usually avoid the sleep functions on all my system.

I actually have a Blue and White G3 tower that occasionally won’t wake from sleep and has to be rebooted.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:07:00 +0000

I'm thankful you were overruled on the Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down menu items. I have used them all at different times, and like having them in the same location rather than remembering different methods to choose them. For example, my desktop is set by default to never fully sleep, but sometimes I want to force it.

On the other hand, as a NeXTie, I'm thankful you got your way for the global Command-Shift-Q shortcut for logout. I much prefer that to the NeXT equivalent, which forced you to switch to the Workspace (Finder equivalent) if you wanted to log out. I have also enabled the Quit menu item in Finder, and use that too.

defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -boolean YES

By: jrc

jrc — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 03:41:00 +0000

I seem to remember that some early internal builds optimistically had only "Sleep" and "Shut Down" in the Special menu*, since the mantra was that "you should never have to restart Mac OS X". However, "Shut Down" was a dynamic menu item that would become "Restart" if you held down the Option key. This was presumably later revisited because 1) users expected to find the Restart command so the absence just made it more confusing, and 2) computer still aren't stable as we would like for them to be.

* Remember, there was no Apple menu back then, just a decorative blue logo fixed in the center of the menu bar.

FWIW, the keyboard shortcut for Log Out on Mac OS 9 was also Command-Q. I filed a bug against Mac OS 9 arguing it should be Command-Option-Q (conceptually equivalent to Quit All Applications) or Command-Shit-Q. But Mac OS 9 died soon enough anyway.

You state that the Log Out command is rarely used. That's true for home users, but Log Out is essential on shared workstations, such as in university computer labs.

By: Swimp

Swimp — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:09:00 +0000

Really interesting post, would love to see more! Cheers,

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:51:00 +0000

and now we see the folly of the vista shutdown situation. i wonder if the total thread at microsoft from soup to nuts was longer or shorter than the comment thread here? clearly this is another ‘feature’ in which user input can only hinder the design process since everyone has an opinion.

By: Richard Drysdall

Richard Drysdall — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:25:00 +0000

I wish that, by default Arno’s behaviour had been implemented, but power users had an option to re-enable all the separate Restart, Log Out etc commands if they want them.
I don’t have MacOS X yet – how does the simple Finder behave?
Surely, that should make everyone happy?

By: Gazze

Gazze — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:40:00 +0000

Ben Skelton : ":: Sleep ::
Most of the Mac users in our office use iMacs and tend to put their computer to sleep at the end of the day before leaving (using the sleep menu item). You don't want to leave your desktop unlocked when you leave your office, and you don't want to have to log out (and therefore log in every morning) as it takes longer"

Ouch! Sleeping is not locking anything, and is a false sense of security. Just create a guest user and fast user switch into that.