Trust is the foundation of any strong, healthy relationship. Without it, the relationship breaks down, and resentment builds up.
I discovered this fact of life yesterday with my iMac, when it unilaterally decided to remove administrative privileges from my main user account. I couldn’t install applications, I couldn’t change my boot up disk — I couldn’t change the status of my account back to Administrator because you need administrative access to do so.
That’s when tensions rose. “What, iMac? You don’t trust me? Is that it? Think I’m gonna mess around with your files? Huh? What’s wrong iMac? It’s the MacBook Pro, isn’t it? You’re jealous. It’s just my portable, alright? What, I can’t use laptops anymore? Huh, iMac? Why don’t you trust me?!” Needless to say, there were tears, frantic reboots, slamming of doors…other generic signs of grief. Etc.
Turns out, though, it wasn’t the iMac’s fault: it seems to be a not-so-uncommon bug in Leopard. Apple’s support site has the deets. Apparently, after some users upgrade to Leopard, their Administrator account may automatically change to a standard one, leaving them stranded, powerless, and emotionally traumatized.
Fortunately, getting your Mac to trust you again is a relatively simple process: Boot up from your Mac OS X install disk and use the Reset Password utility to enable the Root user. Reboot, log in as root, and re-enable administrative access to your user account.
Now, my iMac and me are as happy as can be (yuck). If you’re having personal issues with your Mac, be sure to check Apple’s couple-therapy support site to restore trust back into your computer relationship.
Could you get more corny? This story drips with childish attempted humor.
Corny was what I was going for, man.
No, but seriously: corny's all I got. You try thinking of something funny with this kind of material.
GizmoDan has been on the receiving end of the broken-trust relationship, thus his bitterness. He's probably a Vista user, which means that his pc is always asking him a thousand questions starting with, "are you sure you want to..."
Dan Pourhadi; I enjoyed your write-up. Word-up my 'brotha!
GizmoDan need to take a chill-pill; he seem too uptight. Besides, if he is that bugged what is he doing reading MacUser?! Let him read CompterWorld if he is that uptight.
Dan Pourhadi, It's always best to create an alternate Admin account. I prefer the name Another User. That way when you run into situations like these, you can easily fix them.
you had me ROTFL.. with your sardonic whit.. ;-p
Damian, I had this issues with my install on my MBP. I have my mac set up with An Admin account, and my account with admin privileges. It affected ALL my accounts
Entertaining *and* solved my Leopard problem--10 out of 10 in my book.
This makes me a bit nervous. It seems that all someone needs to do to steal my stuff is reboot with the install CD, change the password and they've got all my supposedly password protected information. Am I missing something? Please tell me I am and why!?!
Do all power users have the lightning bolts as their account picture? :)
AlmostThere, you are correct. Anyone with physical access to your machine can mount your drive and access the data. You need to turn on FileVault for the level of protection you're talking about.