

Why Android 4.2′s Multiple User Account Switching Is Tablet-Only (Hint: Patents) - Shooti
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/29/why-android-jelly-bean-4-2s-multiple-user-account-switching-is-tablet-only-hint-nokia-patented-it-for-phones/

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jerrya
This article is entire speculation (Hint: it's gaseous).

It could be patents, but it doesn't prove that it is by any measure.

I would like to see multiple users on phones, because I would love to put my
phone in guest mode whenever someone wants to borrow it, or whenever the
lockscreen is unlocked without a pin.

If it really IS about patents it sounds like a great case to demonstrate the
silliness of patents.

Smartphones ARE computers, they have computers within them, they run computer
operating systems, ...

Computers have had multiple logins for decades. Tablets are allowed to have
multiple logins.

Why on earth should multiple logins on smartphones be considered patentable?

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shawn-butler
> Why on earth should multiple logins on smartphones be considered patentable?

The actual patent linked [0] makes several claims and it simply isn't just
"multiple logins" whatever that means as you don't login to any phone from any
vendor of which I am aware in the Symbian era (circa 2004). The SIM card
represents your "login" to the phone network and this patent describes all the
innovations that would be required to turn a single SIM card into a usable
"public" or quasi-public resource (usage reports, access controls to apps and
data, etc etc). Consider all of the services and technology that would be
required to make this scenario possible, and more importantly usable
(voicemail for each user, some way to indicate incoming calls for specific
users, etc).

Computer operating systems support multiple user log-ins for time sharing of
CPU resources and for data security. The concept here is not to have a multi
user operating system in that sense. The idea is that the phone features can
be shared, not the "computer" features.

So just simply having multiple logins to a linux kernel running on a phone
with some UI trickery or a "jail" to enable a "guest" mode would not violate
the claims of this patent as I understand them.

You may or may not be philosophically opposed to software patents but this
probably is not the poster-child case for abuse you want to use in any
reasonable discussion. Are there any of the claims made in particular you find
objectionable?

I read the patent claims as enabling an extremely novel/innovative use case of
a smartphone. Would you also find objectionable the patent application made by
Zipcar [1] for the technique/technologies required to turn a privately held
automobile into a shared public or quasi-public resource? Kind of what
appeared in my mind's eye as I first read the Nokia patent.

[0] <http://bitly.com/Q3okiK> [1] <http://bitly.com/TkSR6d>

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paulgb
I'm all for bashing patents, but this seems to ignore the obvious: sharing
fits the way people use tablets a whole lot more than phones.

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jlgreco
Does it really? I would think "guest mode" on phones would be _huge_.

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sabret00the
Just out of curiosity, how often do you let someone else use your phone? Not
check out your phone but actually use it to the point they'd require a guest
mode? Guest mode on a phone is like flying lunches in via Concorde from Paris.

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jhdevos
My 6 years old daughter often wants to play games on my phone. Some mode which
restricts her access (I don't want her looking at Youtube etc. for instance)
so I can leave her unattended with it would be very useful.

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Sindisil
Turn on airplane mode.

It disables the networking, leaving the rest of the phone working.

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jlgreco
"Solutions" like that are the reason Android has such a persistently mediocre
reputation.

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Steko
90% of all mobile patents seem to take the form:

Computer function X, now on a phone (which is a computer)!

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ck2
I am sure cyanogenmod will port it if it's handy.

Remember you are at least allowed to root your phones, despite not being
allowed to root tablets you paid for.

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jordanthoms
I agree that it sucks, but to be clear, you are not allowed to _break DRM_ to
root a tablet you paid for. If the manufacturer supports it (e.g. Google),
there is no problem.

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TheAmazingIdiot
How do you know, if you are a system geek, that you are indeed breaking DRM vs
just doing complicated stuff with a firmware?

It seems obvious if there's PKI in there somewhere. But aside that, how do you
tell the difference?

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nitrogen
I also would like to know the answer to this question. After all, the dreaded
broadcast flag of ~2005 was expected to be covered by the DMCA's
anticircumvention provisions. If a single bit can be a technological
protection measure, who's to say what _couldn't_ be argued is an "effective"
measure by a skilled lawyer?

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conradfr
Just put it on the European Nexus then :)

It may not be the best feature on a phone, but a guest account could be
useful.

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masonlee
I would think it's that SMS and telephone features don't map well to multiple
users. Would you share them across accounts or block them for all but one
user? It's just weird.

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babebridou
Sometimes you're not calling or SMSing a specific person but rather a place or
a community ("Is John with you?", "Is everything alright over there?", etc)
Sometimes it's even weirder to have to choose between calling Fred or Julie
whenever you want to chat with the _couple_ and don't want or need to show a
preference for either of them.

Anyway, we've been there already, and it worked for the most part. We used to
have one phone in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in my sister's room
and we would all be fighting to not have to be the one to pick it up whenever
it rang.

But it worked, and it wasn't exactly "weird" :P

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kschua
Phones are more personal compared with tablets.

How many people actually share their phones with someone else on a regular
basis? I share my iPad with my family but we each have a phone.

Thus it makes more sense to have multiple user accounts on tablets (which is
shared more often) than phones

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babebridou
There is a specific and yet extremely widespread usecase for switching account
on a phone: to distinguish between personal and business use. I'm a different
person at work with my phone than I am at home or at a pub. I don't want to
clutter my gallery at work with thumbnail pictures of last week-end
debauchery, though I do want to see the whiteboard pics I took every day after
each design meeting. The notifications I want to receive at home are not
necessarily from some automated JIRA sender.

Moreover, I've been working on projects that are founded on the assumption
that the device is "public" (for instance a phone wired to a bus stop) or at
least "shared": the devices that, say, train operatives use, could be tied to
the train rather than to the user. I believe we would all greatly benefit from
multi-user accounts on the phone.

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antihero
I don't think people share smartphones as they do tablets, so I can't see this
being a massive issue. That said, if Google just make it pretty easy to hack
it on (some conf file flag somewhere), would they technically still be
infringing?

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TYPE_FASTER
Cisco wifi phones support logging in as different users.

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drivebyacct2
I don't know patents, this is a TC article and there are few comments, but is
there any possibility of truth to this? Would it then be possible to patent
"using patent 20050107114 / 953850... but with tablets"? Doesn't that kind of
show how inane the situation is?

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epidemian
Patent ALL "using a multi-user OS on X device" ideas!

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jlgreco
Better yet, patent all _"[Thing that has been done on 'computers' for over
half a century], but on a PHONE!"_

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goggles99
This article is stupid. Who would want UAS on a phone? Everyone has their own.
Tablets will replace the home PC in the next 5-6 years, not phones.

