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Why Don’t Smartphones Have A “Guest Mode”?

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Re: Why Don’t Smartphones Have A “Guest Mode”?

#201

Post by Karellen »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #168
Karellen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean rubber-hose cryptanalysis. I am amused by the idea of rubber-hose cryptography though - beating on the data until it encrypts itself!

Actually, an actual example would be cutting out someone's tongue to prevent them from speaking. (Obviously this only worked for illiterates.)

That wouldn't be cryptography (hidden writing). It would be cryptology (hidden speech, from "logos" rather than "graphos") or alogy (lack of speech).

/pedant

(sorry)

Re: Why Don’t Smartphones Have A “Guest Mode”?

#203

Post by cheald »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #194
cheald wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a father of a 3-year-old, a separate profile for him would save me an immeasurable amount of frustration. "Figure out which folder the program I want is in" becomes really tiring after about the 600th time.

If you're on Android then Famigo Sandbox sort-of solves this. It only lists a subset of apps (automatically adding child-friendly ones it finds, but then editable) and prevents access to the phone functionality, redirects ad links etc.

My Android phone and I thank you!

Re: Why Don’t Smartphones Have A “Guest Mode”?

#204

Post by adavies42 »

conradev wrote: post #191
adavies42 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, when a friend asks "Hey can I check my email?", you can open Safari, enable this guest mode, and hand the phone to him, no worries. can you provide a sandboxed environment? he can't have access to any of my persistent Safari data (autofill/bookmarks/history/cookies/dbs/etc.), and any he creates should be wiped, probably on return to the lockscreen. all other forms of app switching (e.g. open a pdf url, then "op…

That would be the only issue with something like this. The number of system features is finite and they can be disabled each in their own respect, but partitioning a guest from a user's data in an arbitrary application would prove challenging.

yeah, by the time i got to the end of the list, it was pretty clear how hard it would be to do it right....

Re: Why Don’t Smartphones Have A “Guest Mode”?

#205

Post by groby_b »

zokier wrote: post #124
groby_b wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean fast user switching on a resource-constrained portable device. There's a bit of a difference in terms of how to do it. (See also my above post listing some of the issues)

Current gen mobile phones are already more powerful than my first Windows XP desktop. I don't think computing resources are a limiting factor here.

And your XP desktop actually worked well with fast user switching? On an XP minspec machine? Or even recommended specs? There was a reason it was Powertoys only.

Not to mention that your XP machine had a HDD as a backing store for virtual memory. You could safely page out an entire session. Not so for phone OS's, AFAIK. (I know iOS doesn't have a backing store. Haven't checked Android, but I seriously doubt it)

Not to mention we've only very recently reached specs that make this doable. The iPhone 3GS (not that old) did have a 600MHz processor and 256MB of RAM. That's pretty close to an XP recommended spec, IIRC.

Given that your XP machine wasn't running on a battery, and wasn't busy in the background doing phone-y things, you can see where resources are getting tight.

Phones are just getting there, spec-wise. I'm sure sooner or later we will see a guest mode. The 'when', IMHO, hinges more on solving the UX issues, since specs always march on.

Re: Why Don’t Smartphones Have A “Guest Mode”?

#206

Post by damncabbage »

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #170
WalterBright wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I will give it a try.

Do note that there are 2 ways to share a graphical user interface on X. The first way is by remotely running a program on your own Xserver. The programs' processes occur on the remote connection and are sent down the SSH tunnel and show up on your display. This is the common way in Linux. The second way is by an older program from the Windows world: VNC. VNC takes a local, running display (example: my gui) and allows…

VNC (at least TightVNC) also lets you set up a display for yourself, if you want.

Re: Why Don’t Smartphones Have A “Guest Mode”?

#207

Post by benvanderbeek »

forensic wrote: post #189
benvanderbeek wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the civil answer to my question "why not just avoid keeping weird stuff on your phone?" is: "I keep naked girlfriend pics on my iPhone. I don't think that's weird, but I don't want someone to see them." I see your point. I apologize for using the word "weird." I assume that's what the downvotes were for.

Civil answers are overrated. I'm really sick of corporate leaders (e.g. You) telling me I should change my life to suit them. Their job is to accommodate the customer regardless of how weird my hobbies may be.

"corporate leaders (e.g. You)"

I'm honored, and confused, that you would consider me a corporate leader.

Like I said, I see your point. And if you look at my comment, it was in the form of a question, not an imperative.

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