“Many of Mac OS X Lion’s features have been known for months, but Apple has snuck in at least one interesting new feature called ‘Restart to Safari,'” Arnold Kim reports for MacRumors.
“On Mac OS X Lion’s user lock screen, you are given the option to ‘Restart to Safari’ rather than logging in,” Kim reports. “This allows you to boot the computer into just the web browser and nothing else.”
Kim reports, “This browser only mode allows unauthorized users to simply browse the web through Safari rather than having access to any personal files or other applications on the machine. Of course with Lion’s new auto-save and application restore feature, returning users will find themselves back at the same place they were before the restart.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
That eclipses all of Chrome OS right there…
Yes, this feature will send Google’s Chromebook into the dustbin of tech history.
What serious market is there for mere Chrome OS anyway?
Whoopee. An operating system that’s only a web browser. Golly, Web v2.0 marathon. Glorified WebTV. Get in line.
zzzzz
i dont think so people will buy a chrome book because its cheap and on a pay monthly scheme with free upgrades and replacements. who would spend $1000 on a mac only to go onto the internet.
star wars the old republicc MMO coming out will be windows only. These people still think OSX sucks. what gives?
Well Ed, there are a lot of stupid people in this world and I’m sure both of us deal with our fair share most every day.
For me, it’s at work.
To be fair, it’s not just a Windows vs OSX opinion thing. Companies have a certain number of employees, and those employees know how to do certain things. Programming for Mac requires learning a whole bunch of new stuff for these people, or hiring a whole bunch of new people. Then there’s DirectX vs OpenGL. All for a platform that most gamers eschew.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to see more games for Mac, and that is happening (albeit slowly), but there’s reasons why it isn’t going to happen overnight.
Can you say kiosk?
That’s a great idea.
I was wondering what this feature would be good for and then I saw your comment.
Well said indeed.
If they could enable that feature for any processor intensive app like DAWs, Video Editing suites and graphics apps, that would really be cool.
Hmm… wonder what it’s for :S… Someone said KIOSK.. ok.. decent.. But isn’t a custom iPad app better for that? But yea, you’re right.. Dumb Terminals, etc.
I can see a good use for my kids and their friends who do most anything online for school. Saves a large amount of system administration.
Creative simplification!
It would surprise me if this feature couldn’t be used to make ANY app the “locked-in” app for Lion. I remember that there used to be a way to do this in the classic MacOS; basically, you just convince the OS to keep some other app around rather than FInder.app, and voila. Very useful for many things.
This makes sense, the Chromebook doesn’t.
Needs “Restart to Mail” too for people who just want to check their emails.
It seems that this feature bypasses the user mode altogether! This would not be “your” Safari with your saved bookmarks and your remembered passwords. So the idea of “Restart to Mail” seems counter to this intention of facilitating browser use outside of any particular user.
That would be unnecessarilly redundant.
If you have a feature that will restart into your own personalized version of a Safari home screen, your email can be accessible from within.
Is it just me thinking that the new feature is for longer battery? Most people spend time on the net, Restart to Safari is perfect for them, the system only has to take care of Safari, and users get much more surfing time! I think it’s inspired from iOS, one application a time. I excpect the feature long time ago….thank you Apple! I think Restart to Safari will have extend to other apps too. Restart to iMoive, Restart to GarageBand and so on……
Interesting.
I expect we’ll soon hear about the new feature in Windows 8 called IE Mode or something to that effect, it does exactly the same thing on Windows!
MS started adding the feature just this morning 😉