Mac OS X Lion Can Run in Chrome OS-Like Browser Only Mode

Sunday June 12, 2011 1:33 am PDT by Arnold Kim

While all the focus has been the many new features found in iOS 5 Beta, Apple also released a new developer beta of Mac OS X Lion last week.

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". On Mac OS X Lion's user lock screen, you are given the option to "Restart to Safari" rather than logging in. This allows you to boot the computer into just the web browser and nothing else. 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. This browser-only mode is reminiscent of Google's lightweight Chrome OS which is designed to offer the user a web-only based operating system.

Apple's motivations for offering such a browser-only mode differs from Google's. Google is partnering with manufacturers in order to build Chrome OS only laptops that offer cheap browser-only machines. Apple's not likely to be going that route with Mac OS X Lion but is instead offering a nice sandboxed mode so Lion can easily act as a secure and anonymous web kiosk.

Mac OS X Lion will become available for $29.99 on the Mac App Store in July.

Update: This feature seems to be part of the "Find My Mac" feature set which allows users to get access to the internet. Though the premise appears to be to give your Mac a chance to phone home, the feature seems very useful for day to day use.

Top Rated Comments

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theLimit

119 months ago

Finally, Wife Mode! Now when she wants to use my computer for a minute to surf, she won't accidentally mess up any of my important (porn) files.

Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Apple_OD

This was actually an advertised feature. It was mentioned as part of the "find my mac" feature to trick potential thieves into using the Internet whilst stopping them from gaining access to any personal files.

Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Becordial

This would be great for iOS too. If you want to allow people to use your iPad or iPhone but dont want them to go to your email this would be quite handy.

mike5411

I wonder if a Mac running this browser only mode would have better battery life than running OSX?

baryon

What's even better is that Safari Only mode runs not from the primary partition but from the recovery partition. This means that you can use Safari even if your entire system crashes or anything happens to it. That's very useful to get help or do emergency communication.

So unless you have a hardware failure, you will ALWAYS have access to the net.

Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)